Ex-Mountie guilty of murdering Ottawa cop

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This article was published 14/03/2012 (5196 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Kevin Gregson, the former Mountie who stabbed Ottawa Police officer Eric Czapnik to death more than two years ago, has been found guilty of first-degree murder.

The jury in Gregson’s trial delivered its verdict on Tuesday night after 91/2 hours of deliberation.

They also found him guilty of robbery in the armed theft of a car.

The father of three will spend 25 years in a federal penitentiary without the possibility of parole. He will be 70 years old before his first chance at freedom.

The trial lasted a little more than two weeks, largely because Gregson’s legal aid lawyer, Craig Fleming, chose not to cross-examine most of the prosecution witnesses.

The basic facts in the case were not in dispute.

Gregson’s often emotional and graphic trial revealed a killer whose troubled disciplinary past with the RCMP culminated in the brutal stabbing of the 51-year-old Czapnik in the parking lot of the Ottawa Hospital’s civic campus on Dec. 29, 2009.

In rambling testimony, Gregson admitted he stabbed Czapnik to death, but said his action had been instinctive and the result of being highly trained by both the RCMP and a private security-guard camp in South Africa.

“I killed him, but didn’t murder him,” was Gregson’s basic defence from the moment his was arrested.

But Crown prosecutor Brian Holowka told the court Gregson’s life was crumbling around him because he was broke — the RCMP had stopped his salary and wanted more than $20,000 in back pay from him — and the night before Czapnik’s death, his wife had confronted him with allegations of sexual abuse against a young girl.

Holowka said Gregson was “dressed for battle” and knew exactly what he was doing when he carjacked the vehicle and made his way to the hospital.

 

— Postmedia News