CORNWALL – A city man, caught with a Taser during a police operation and then found with a mobile phone, has been sentenced to time served in pretrial custody.
Blake Atwell, 46, was sentenced by Judge Gilles Renaud last month (Dec. 14) after pleading guilty to three of the eight charges he was facing.
Those charges were possession of a Taser while unlicenced to carry one, possession of a Taser while prohibited to have one under a Section 109 weapons ban and breach of a court undertaking to not possess any cell phone or handheld communication device.
Court records show Renaud gave Atwell credit for his roughly three and half months (107 days) in pretrial custody, credited at one and a half days for one, for a total of 161 days.
The sentence included another weapons ban for 10 years and Atwell had to submit a DNA sample to the court.
The other five charges were withdrawn by the Crown.
Atwell was charged in relation to a drug trafficking investigation by the Cornwall Police Service called Project Sunrise.
Eight homes, including Atwell’s, were searched during the operation on June 3, 2021, when the Taser was found. But Atwell wasn’t arrested until a week later (June 9) when an officer found him with a cell phone.
Atwell never faced any drug-related charges from the police raid.
Several other individuals face drug-related charges are their cases are still before the courts.