The Crown is seeking seven years in jail for a man who, amid a stupor of prescription drugs and alcohol, shot at West Vancouver police officers.
At the time of the offence in June 2023, Siavash Ahmadi was recently divorced and staying with his parents at their West Vancouver apartment. He was taking antianxiety meds, antidepressants and sleeping pills, while consuming large amounts of alcohol, the court heard at his sentencing hearing in North Vancouver Provincial Court, Nov. 7.
He was also an avid hunter and had a collection of firearms.
Around 1 a.m. on June 26, he left his parents' apartment after drinking a bottle of wine, taking a shotgun and a .22 calibre pistol with him, according to an agreed statement of facts read out in court. He drove to East Vancouver where he broke into a friend’s home and got into a confrontation with neighbours. Just after 2 a.m. he got into his car, which had a blown-out tire, and drove back to the North Shore where he was spotted at the side of the highway by a tow truck driver.
Soon, three officers arrived, as had Ahmadi’s father, whom he’d called for help. As officers were taking him to a patrol car for an impaired driving investigation, Ahamdi reached into his waistband, pulled out a pistol and shot it twice in the vicinity of the officers.
One of the officers shot one round back while another, who was witnessing the incident from the driver’s seat of his police SUV, accelerated his vehicle into Ahmadi.
Police seized the gun and Ahmadi was taken to hospital where it was determined he’d received a serious head injury.
Blood tests showed a mix of legal drugs and alcohol that would produce a “level of intoxication that would impact an individual’s capacity to process information and to respond appropriately to his environment,” Crown counsel Michaela Donnely said.
Weeks later, when he was interviewed by West Vancouver Police Department investigators, Ahmadi said he could not remember the incident or much of the week leading up to it.
Initially, he was charged with nine criminal offences including two counts of attempted murder. In July, he pleaded guilty to impaired driving, unlawfully discharging a firearm and two counts of possession of a loaded restricted firearm.
Despite his level of intoxication, Donnely said Ahmadi bore a high level of moral culpability and should face jail.
“Throughout this whole set of circumstances, Mr. Ahmadi’s intentional risk-taking was significant. There were times after times after times where he could have chosen something else, where he ought to have known better, and he nonetheless continued,” Donnely said.
In an emotional victim impact statement delivered in court, Const. Rebecca Mair said had been on the job for just 16 days when she was called to the scene. As a result of being shot at, she suffered from PTSD episodes, which have impacted her ability to go on with her training and carry out her job, she said.
“My family and I knew that this career has its dangers, and this level of risk is what I signed up for. But we didn’t think that was me almost being killed on the side of the highway at 3 a.m. for no reason,” she said. “I can never erase the feeling of checking my body for bullet holes. I cannot forget telling a father to stop looking because I thought his son was dead. My heart will never fully heal from the fear I put in my partner when I called her that morning.”
Although a prison term would normally be expected in similar cases involving firearms, Ahmadi’s lawyer Caroline Senini argued he should serve a sentence of two years less a day of house arrest followed by three years of probation.
Ahmadi had been suffering from depression since a close friend was killed in the shooting down of Flight PS752 in Iran in 2020, she said. That was followed by PTSD, the breakdown of his marriage, job loss and a growing reliance on misuse of prescription pills and alcohol to cope with his feelings, she said.
Since the incident, Ahmadi has been committed to recovery, including counselling, sobriety, art therapy and returning to work as an accountant on a part-time basis.
“Given Mr. Ahmadi’s performance on bail, his previous good character, the mental health elements underlying the offending, the steps he’s taken towards rehabilitation … it’s submitted that rehabilitation must be given significant weight in the analysis,” she said.
Senini also stressed that Ahmadi has shown remorse by pleading guilty to the charges.
Ahmadi addressed the court directly to apologize to the victims, his family, and the wider community.
“Having lived on the North Shore for over two decades, I am deeply ashamed for my actions which disrupted the peace and safety of the local community. I am terribly sorry for the dangerous situation, the worry and the fear that I caused. I take full responsibility for my actions, and I acknowledge the seriousness and wrongfulness of those actions. There is no excuse for what I did, for endangering the lives of innocent civilians and those who serve their community,” he said.
The judge will hand down a decision in North Vancouver provincial court in February.
