Man gets 12 years for killing Const. Robert Plunkett
Posted June 29, 2011 8:08 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A man who killed a police officer in Markham four years ago has been sentenced to 12 years in jail minus a credit for time served.
Ontario Superior Court Judge Michelle Fuerst said Nadeem Jiwa would get a credit of seven years and 10 months for the time he spent in pretrial custody. She also banned him from driving for 10 years.
“The community is outraged and the sentence should reflect [that],” Fuerst said. “The sentence is not intended as a measure of the value or the worth of Const. Plunkett’s life.”
On Aug. 2, 2007, while trying to arrest Jiwa for stealing airbags, Const. Robert Plunkett was pinned between the 19-year-old’s fleeing car and a tree.
After Plunkett, a husband and father of three, died in hospital, Jiwa was charged with first-degree murder and convicted of manslaughter last year.
Plunkett’s wife, Sonja, wrote a victim impact statement, which was read in court on Wednesday.
“The impact that Rob’s death has had on all of us has been a very difficult and unimaginable journey – one that I am sure will never end,” she said. “He was my best friend as well as my husband.”
She also said she has suffered from depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“These mental illnesses have consumed me as I have struggled to figure out who I am if I am no longer Rob’s wife,” her statement read. “I lost my identity; I isolated myself from everyday life, as it was too difficult to face. I had a sense of doom and believed that something tragic was going to happen to everyone that I loved.”
The Crown had asked for a sentence of 12 to 14 years. The defence wanted a term of five to seven years.
Jiwa’s lawyer said an appeal hasn’t been ruled out.
“He (Jiwa) was somewhat shocked at the length of sentence but he’s OK,” attorney Lawrence Cohen said. “We’ll be speaking to him in the next couple of days in terms of what his next course of action is.”
