A judge has sentenced a West Vancouver man to more than three years jail for an alcohol- and drug-addled incident where he shot a gun at police.
In North Vancouver provincial court on Tuesday, Siavash Ahmadi was sentenced to impaired driving, unlawfully discharging a firearm and two counts of possessing a loaded restricted firearm.
Initially, he was charged with a total of nine criminal offences including two counts of attempted murder, but in July 2024 he entered a guilty plea for the four counts he received judgment for this week.
Ahmadi’s total four-year jail sentence will be reduced by a credit of 233 days, accounting for his time already spent in custody.
At the time of the offence in June 2023, Ahmadi was recently divorced and living with his parents, Judge Mark Jette said, reading from an agreed statement of facts.
He was a hunter and a shooter, and had a licence to possess restricted firearms. Some were kept in his parents’ home and some in a storage locker in Abbotsford.
He had travelled to Iran – where is family is originally from – earlier that year, where he received several prescriptions including benzodiazepines and sleeping pills. But Ahmadi didn’t inform his Canadian doctor of these medications when he returned, Jette told the court.
Back in Canada, both his family and his close friend noticed that heavy drinking and taking medications was affecting Ahmadi’s behaviour. His father noted Ahmadi was “delusional” and urged his son to seek help, the judge said.
After Ahmadi became heated during a conversation at his parents’ West Vancouver apartment, he stormed out at around 1 a.m. on June 25, 2023, taking a shotgun and .22 caliber pistol with him.
Next, he drove to East Vancouver, where he broke into his friend’s apartment and got into an argument with a neighbour. Then Ahmadi drove back to the North Shore, and a tow truck driver spotted his black Toyota pickup around 2:15 a.m. on the offramp at 15th Street in West Van.
Constables from West Vancouver Police Department arrived soon after, and decided to administer an impaired driving test on Ahmadi. He was asked to retrieve his driver’s licence from his car.
When Ahmadi returned to his vehicle, dash cam footage from the tow truck showed him reaching into the back of his car and placing an object behind his back, Jette told the court.
As Ahmadi walked back to the police vehicles, he hesitated, took a step back and then fired two shots at an officer from about two metres away. Another officer took out his pistol and shot at Ahmadi. No one was hit, the judge said.
Thinking Ahmadi would flee, another police member in an SUV accelerated into Ahmadi, knocking him onto the hood and over the roof of the vehicle, and sending his firearm flying.
He was then rushed to hospital, suffering a severe head injury. In hospital, he was found to have blood alcohol content between 0.37 and 0.55, along with benzodiazepine, several antidepressants and sleep medication, Jette said.
After the incident, police found a semiautomatic rifle in a bag, as well as two loaded semiautomatic pistols without trigger locks. Ahmadi was licensed to own the restricted pistols but not to transport them, the judge said.
Despite intoxication, accused acted with intent, judge says
At trial in November, the Crown sought a sentence of seven years jail. But Ahmadi’s defence argued that he should serve two years house arrest followed by three years probation, taking the accused’s personal circumstances into account.
Handing down his decision, Jette said aggravating factors in Ahmadi’s sentence included him arming himself on the night of the shooting, despite pleas from his father not to leave the apartment; becoming intoxicated with alcohol and prescription drugs; driving in an intoxicated state across town while unlawfully carrying multiple firearms; and endangering the lives of police, the tow truck driver and anyone else in the area when he shot his pistol.
Mitigating factors mentioned by the judge were that Ahamdi entered early guilty pleas, had no prior criminal convictions, struggled with mental health after the death of a friend in a plane crash, and has generally led a prosocial life. Since being charged, he has worked to deal with his mental health issues and maintain sobriety, the judge said.
But Jette said some of the risk taking was intentional, and worsened by substance use.
“A finding that the combined effect of mental health issues linked to self-induced intoxication contributed to the commission of these offences is not a complete explanation,” Jette said. “I agree with Crown counsel that there’s an element of intentional risk taking.”
Despite his relatively high level of intoxication, Ahmadi was able to act with intent and deliberation on the date of the shooting, the judge said.
“He then drove his vehicle around parts of West Vancouver with multiple loaded handguns at the ready, and he deliberately armed himself with one of them during his [interaction] with police,” Jette said.
Taking into account Ahmadi’s status as a first-time offender, and his relatively low risk to re-offend, Jette ruled that Ahmadi should serve concurrent sentences for the firearms offences totalling around three years and four months remaining jail time. He will also have to surrender all his guns.
For the impaired driving offence, Ahmadi was sentenced to the mandatory minimum fine of $1,000 for first-time offenders, along with a two-year driving ban.
