Eight year sentence in hit and run death of teen girl
Andrew Baulcomb
Tom Shade, who deliberately ran down a 15-year-old girl with his Chrysler Sebring two years ago, was handed the equivalent of an eight-year prison sentence Friday.
Superior Court Justice Stephen Glithero also ordered Shade to provide a sample of his DNA into Canada’s national crime database, and prohibited him for life from possessing firearms, ammunition or explosives.
Shade’s lawyer, Tyler Smith, urged the judge to sentence his client to six or seven years in prison, after Shade pleaded guilty to manslaughter on March 19.
Assistant Crown attorney Craig Fraser argued that a nine- to 10-year sentence would be “appropriate.”
His conviction stems from an incident on April 7, 2008, when Ashleigh Maegan Carmichael was struck by Shade’s car and dragged onto a residential lawn near Barton Street East.
On the night of Maegan’s death, Shade, also known as “Magic,” was visiting a house near the Carmichaels’ home on Barton Street East, looking to purchase marijuana with a friend, Candace Colby.
Another family member arrived home, and recognized Colby as a woman who had attacked Maegan’s brother Justin with a baseball bat a year earlier.
Maegan, Justin, and several friends approached Shade and Colby, and the situation escalated. Shade was “sucker-punched” twice, and said he was subjected to racial insults, neither of which came from Maegan or Justin.
Despite pleas from another friend to walk away, Shade removed a pair of brass knuckles from the trunk of his car before getting in, accelerating rapidly down a nearby alleyway, and “generally steering” toward Maegan after exiting the alley, according to an agreed statement of facts.
Shade was intoxicated and also on parole for possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking.
Maegan later died in hospital due to massive trauma sustained on her entire body.