A young man who smashed his way into a North Vancouver home and tied up its occupants in the middle of the night will spend the next four years in a federal jail, before likely being deported.
The mother of Gong Oui Choi, 22, of Burnaby, wept softly as he was handcuffed and led away by a sheriff in a North Vancouver courtroom last week.
Judge Judith Gedye sentenced Choi on July 15 to the mandatory minimum sentence of five years in jail - with a year's credit for time already spent in custody - after he pleaded guilty to break and enter, robbery, unlawful confinement and using a disguise to commit a crime in connection with a home invasion.
Choi was among a group of four men recruited by a gangster in December of 2008 to commit a home invasion at a house on Tempe Knoll Drive.
Crown counsel Kristin Bryson said Choi was convinced to get involved in the scheme by a friend, Yum Lim, also 22, who phoned Choi and asked him if he wanted to take part in something that would make him some money.
Choi agreed, said Bryson, but "it seems he didn't know the full details of what was going to happen" until the night of Dec. 8, 2008, when all four men gathered at the apartment of the recruiter who gave them details about the home, the victims and how the home invasion was to be carried out.
They were told the victim was a gambler who supposedly kept large sums of money in the house, said Bryson. Half of any money seized in the heist was to go to the recruiter who organized the home invasion. The rest was to be split between the four men who were to actually commit the crime.
The recruiter handed the group weapons - including a handgun and a Taser - before the four set off for the home at about 3 a.m.
One man stayed behind in the car while three of them - including Choi - smashed the window of a sliding door and entered the home.
The sound of breaking glass woke up the occupants of the home - a husband and wife - who were downstairs sleeping in a basement suite. The couple tried to hide while the man called 9-1-1 and whispered information to a police dispatcher who immediately sent officers to the scene.
Before the police arrived, however, the home invaders found the couple's hiding place, tied them up with duct tape and threatened to kill them if they didn't hand over all their money. While that was going on, the phone line to the police dispatcher was left open, said Bryson, allowing the dispatch tape to record the sounds of a door being kicked in and the intruders issuing shouted threats.
Before Choi and the others managed to grab any money, however, their lookout phoned to say police were on the way.
All four men piled into the getaway car and tried to escape, but were stopped a block later by North Vancouver RCMP officers who found masks, a hammer and a loaded handgun in the car. The would-be thieves had left their Taser at the house by mistake.
Choi's defence lawyer David Milburn noted Choi made a full confession to police when he was arrested and has no criminal record. Choi - who is from Korea and not a Canadian citizen - was only 20 when he committed the crime, Milburn added. "He's ashamed that he participated in this crime," he said. It is likely he will be deported when he gets out of jail, Milburn added.
Before he was sentenced, Choi told the judge "I'm truly sorry," and said that in following his friend into the scheme, "I made the biggest mistake of my life."
Gedye told Choi that while in prison he would be surrounded by "the kinds of people who got you into that trouble in the first place," warning him, "You're going to come out of that experience a much-changed person."
"Hopefully you can find some way of putting this behind you," she said.
"This whole thing strikes me as being an enormous waste."
Duck Joong Yoon, 25, one of the other men allegedly involved in the home invasion, is currently on trial in B.C. Supreme Court. Two others are believed to have skipped the country and gone back to Korea. There are outstanding warrants out for their arrest.
