Canadian Drug Dealer Spent The Past 17 Years Hiding From Police In His Basement, Sentenced To 3 Years In Jail

(Source) A violent drug dealer who hid from police in the basement of his Onoway house for 17 years was sent to prison Friday. Benjamin Louis Young was wanted on a Canada-wide warrant since 1995, when he abducted and beat a man he believed stole two pounds of marijuana from him. Young assaulted the man with a phone book, killed his dog and nearly chopped off two of his fingers.

Several members of Young’s gang were tracked down and arrested over several weeks. Young decided to hide in his own house. “He quite literally lived in the basement of the home for 17 years,” defence lawyer Peter Royal said. While Young’s wife went to work, he helped raise their two children and did household chores during his self-imposed exile. “I cannot imagine why, for 17 years, police didn’t visit his home, because they would’ve found him there,” Royal said. “It’s unbelievable.” The Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team’s fugitive apprehension unit finally found Young at his home in October 2012. They also found his marijuana operation.

Young was 33 when he went into hiding. He is now 52. In the prisoner’s box, Young said he is no longer the man he once was. “My first lawyer told me that if I were you, I’d put as much time between these charges as you can and I did that to the best of my ability,” Young told court. “I knew someday I’d have to give my pound of flesh.” Royal, who was not Young’s lawyer in 1995, said his client wants to live a normal life and run a landscaping business. On Friday, Young was sentenced to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm, extortion and killing an animal. He has already been fined $2,500 for the marijuana operation officers found in 2012.

“We had been looking for him for years,” said RCMP Cpl. Colette Zazulak after the 2012 bust. According to agreed facts, Young believed that Shane Letwin had stolen two pounds of marijuana from Young in August 1995. Young was a “mid-level marijuana dealer” and the leader of his accomplices, Royal said. Young, known as Benny, and his gang abducted Letwin from his Edmonton apartment and forced him to eat a butter tart laced with LSD as a type of truth serum. The group took Letwin, then 29, to a Spruce Grove acreage where his bull terrier was boarded. Young shot the dog five times with a handgun. Letwin was then taken to an abandoned shed near Calahoo, handcuffed and beaten with a leather sap and a phone book. “This was several years ago, when we had phone books,” Crown prosecutor Christian Lim told court. The gang moved Letwin to Young’s home, beat him with a snowmobile belt and held him overnight. He was released the next morning near the Royal Alexandra Hospital and warned not to call police.

Well this story makes zero sense. I honestly can’t tell who the bigger moron is here. On one hand you have the police, who had a warrant out for a guy’s arrest for 17 years and never thought about looking in HIS FUCKING BASEMENT! Is that real life? That’s like the 3rd place you look for a guy who is missing. 1 is under the bed, 2 is in his closet, and 3 is in the basement. It’s not even a failure to do adequate police work, it’s a failure to think like a 5 year old playing hide and go seek. How does that possibly happen?

But, just when you thought the police were dumb, in comes Benjamin Young, the guy who spent 17 years hiding in his basement, living life in fear, only to come out and get sentenced to three years in jail. How the hell does that make any sense? How do you not either 1) Leave the country and live life like a normal person on the run or 2) Just do your time and then get released back in 1998 and not have to live in your fucking basement like a savage. Is Canadian prison that bad? Because I imagine it being one step below a country club. No chance it can be worth spending 17 years in your basement. You lived life as a stay at home father instead of going to jail for a couple of years? I refuse to believe it. Fucking Canada, learn how to use your brain once. Just once.