Thierry Dominique Nshimayezu arrest led to a safe in the home which contained an unloaded handgun with ammunition stored separately.

Thierry Dominique Nshimayezu, 24, faced mandatory minimum one-year sentences on each of two counts he pleaded guilty to, but Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance, after studying previous court rulings, agreed with the defence that each of the two sentences could be served concurrently. She sentenced Nshimayezu to 380 days in custody but gave him the standard two-for-one credit for the time he had served in pre-sentence custody.Acting on information that crack cocaine was being sold out of a home at 953 Wellington Ave., police obtained a search warrant and then made a forced entry into the residence at 3:15 a.m. on Oct. 14, 2006. All five black males found in a bedroom in the rear of the home were arrested and charged with possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking.
There were no drugs found on Nshimayezu, but a key found on his possession following his arrest led to a safe in the home which contained an unloaded handgun with ammunition stored separately."I'm really sorry about how I acted," Nshimayezu told the judge in a barely audible statement before sentencing.Pomerance called the defence and Crown's joint submission on sentencing "lenient" but within the acceptable range. She said the charges were "very serious" and that prohibited weapons in drug situations represent a "grave danger" to the community which requires a court sentence that serves as deterrence and denunciation.Nshimayezu, who had no prior criminal convictions, was also placed on two years probation during which he is not to own a cellphone or associate with the four co-accused, and he was handed a lifetime ban on possessing or handling firearms and other restricted weapons and ordered to submit a blood sample of a police DNA databank.Defence lawyer Frank Miller described his client as a refugee from Rwanda whose family was "decimated" by the genocide that occurred there when he was a youngster. Miller said one could "only speculate on the long-term impact" of that traumatic experience.
Following Nshimayezu's sentencing, the Crown withdrew all charges against co-defendant Abdirizak Farah Abdullahi.Co-accused Akeen Abdul Newby had also been expected to enter a plea, but his case is continuing with a pre-trial set for Sept. 30. A trial is still pending for a youth involved, and the fifth accused had already pled guilty and was sentenced for his role.