Ex-biker guilty of assaulting city police officer

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This article was published 03/02/2007 (7157 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former Winnipeg biker best known for triggering a summer of very public violence by shooting a Hells Angels member in the head pleaded guilty Friday to assaulting a city police officer.

Kevin Sylvester, 43, was sentenced to the equivalent of three months time in custody and profusely apologized for his actions, which he blamed on taking too much antidepressant medication.

“I’m sorry for the whole incident. It was a bad scene that I caused. It was embarrassing,” Sylvester told the court.

He was arrested in mid-December after making a series of phone calls to a Crown attorney, his defence lawyer and even the Winnipeg Free Press, in which he made comments about wanting to get into a confrontation with police.

Police went to speak with Sylvester at his home, and he responded by kicking one of the officers in the groin, court was told. He was eventually restrained with a Taser stun gun and taken into custody. The officer wasn’t seriously injured.

Crown attorney Marty Minuk stayed a charge of uttering threats Friday, saying it would be difficult to secure a conviction. Defence lawyer Jeff Gindin said that’s because Sylvester was more intent on harming himself than anyone else.

“He had been suffering from depression and was over-medicated at the time,” he said.

Sylvester said he was angry with the way he’s been treated since he struck a controversial plea bargain with the Crown in 2001.

He was sentenced to two years less a day in jail for his part in shooting and wounding Hells Angel Rod Sweeney as he sat in his tow truck with his young son beside him. Sweeney survived the point-blank attack.

Sylvester became a wanted man after the shooting and was the victim of several retaliatory incidents, including a firebombing of his house and a drive-by shooting attempt.

The Crown eventually offered Sylvester the reduced jail sentence in exchange for his testimony against two Hells Angels — including Sweeney’s brother, Dale — accused of trying to kill him.

Sylvester told the Free Press that police and justice officials made all sorts of financial promises to him that weren’t fulfilled. He claims his life is in constant danger now that he’s no longer in witness protection.

Sylvester has been a fixture on the province’s biker scene for more than a decade. He is the younger brother of Darwin Sylvester, the president of the former Spartans motorcycle gang. Darwin disappeared in 1998 and is presumed dead.

Sylvester began targeting the Hells Angels in 2001 because he believes they were involved in his brother’s killing, court was told.

Sylvester narrowly escaped death himself while a member of the Spartans in 1992. He was critically wounded when he got into a gun fight with a member of the rival Los Brovos gang.

www.mikeoncrime.com