A Montrealer who specialized in business robberies, sometimes carried out with a pistol or knife, risks long being eclipsed as the crown now wants to label him a “criminal”.
• Also read: “He pointed a gun at my head”
“The frequency of his crimes and their severity is only increasing, the risk that he will engage in violence again is significant,” the motion reads, in a bid to ensure Tyson Ruggles is not released any time soon.
Is that because Ruggles, 54, has a solid criminal record? He has been convicted of burglary and gun possession multiple times since 2006.
“I’m going to kill you,” Tyson Ruggles told a florist in Lachine in 2016, just before stabbing him twice in the neck.
Also a sex shop
Then, in 2019, it was a supermarket worker in the LaSalle sector who believed she was going to die when Ruggles arrived armed with a knife. The woman had been tied up and made to kneel while he robbed the store. A few days later he did it again in another supermarket, this time armed with a pistol.
“Get out of here,” he said, pointing his gun at customers while the cashier lay face down on the floor with his hands and feet tied.
He had robbed nine other businesses that year, stealing tens of thousands of dollars in cash, lottery tickets, and cigarettes. He had even robbed an adult shop where he was transporting boxes of items, the origin of which was not revealed to the court.
Ruggles was eventually arrested after a chase after stealing a cab.
“You better kill me,” the robber warned the police.
Supervision requested
Instead, he had thrown him into a cell, where he had been languishing ever since. And he could stay there for a long time now that the Crown now requires him to be a long-term offender for 10 years, the longest period legally allowed.
As a result, even after serving his sentence, Ruggles must continue to submit to correctional facilities, which may impose a number of conditions on him to control his risk of violence.
“Long-term surveillance is necessary to protect the public,” concluded forensic psychiatrist France Proulx in an assessment filed with the court filing.
During Thursday’s hearing at the Montreal courthouse, the Crown’s Me Alexandre Gautier also announced that the victims will testify at the next hearing about the impact of the robberies on them.
Ruggles should also go to court, his attorney Alan Guttman said. Until then, the burglar remains in preventive detention.
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