A former employee who defrauded the Home Depot of more than $10,000 was sentenced to nine months of house arrest.
Vanessa Donaldson pleaded guilty to a single count of fraud earlier this year.
Donaldson was working at the store between July and Oct. 14 and processed returns for the store. In a series of fraudulent returns, Donaldson transferred money into her own account while pretending they were actual returns.
Store security caught Donaldson in October and called in the RCMP.
Donaldson only processed four fraudulent returns, but in total she took $10,480.99.
Judge Larry Nemirsky sentenced Donaldson to an 18-month conditional sentence that will keep her on near-permanent house arrest for the first nine months.
She will be allowed out of her house for work and for a handful of other small exceptions and will have to be available for checks from her probation officer or the RCMP.
For the last nine months of her sentence she will be under a curfew from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.
She is also prohibited from entering the St. Albert Home Depot.
She will also have to take any counselling she is directed to and Nemirsky suggested the probation office look specifically at financial counselling.
She will also have to make restitution on the case, but it was not made part of her probation order.
A man pleading guilty to assaulting and twice threatening to kill the same woman lost a bid for a sentence of weekend jail time and will instead spend 99 days prison.
John Morrison Gibson pleaded guilty to one count of assault, two counts of uttering threats and a single count of breaching his probation on Monday.
Gibson’s then girlfriend called police on Oct. 8, 2008 saying that he attacked her and he had been throwing her around.
She had driven away from the house, but Gibson had tried to force his way into the car.
The couple had been together for five months at the time and the young woman told police Gibson had threatened to hurt her several times.
She said at one point in time he said he was going to kill her and burn her house down while she was inside.
Gibson called her again on April 14 of this year and she said he threatened to rip off her head.
Crown prosecutor Scott Pittman was seeking jail terms of between 30 and 45 days for each of the crimes to be served consecutively.
Gibson pleaded with Judge Peter Ayotte to sentence him to less than 90 days of jail time because any sentence less than that can be served on weekends.
He told the judge he had a job lined up and was going to live with his mother to help her out.
He said he would be willing to abide by any conditions Ayotte wanted to impose.
“I would be grateful for the opportunity to do the weekends,” he said. “I will abide by all conditions.”
Ayotte said he was disturbed by the two incidents involving the same victim.
“Clearly those offences were committed while you were awaiting trial on the first set of charges.”
Ayotte sentenced him to a total of 105 days in jail, but gave him credit for six days he had already spent in custody, which did not reduce the sentence enough to qualify for an intermittent sentence.
He also added 12 months of probation that will start as soon as his jail term expires.
A man caught with a small amount of stolen property was sentenced to the 13 days he had already served in jail.
Nathan Staheli, 25, pleaded guilty to a single count of possession of stolen property.
A maintenance manager at St. Albert Place called police on April 13 because Staheli was acting strangely.
When police confronted him they found a pair of pants with the tags still attached that had been taken from The Bay.
Staheli has a significant criminal record. Before passing sentence, Judge Peter Ayotte asked Staheli if he had a drug problem.
Staheli said he didn’t but occasionally drank and smoked marijuana.
Ayotte encouraged him to consider the impact of that on his life.
“That may be contributing to your regular appearances here.”
