Drug dealer wants to scrap guilty plea to escape stiff sentence

BARRIE – A low-level drug dealer poised to be sentenced Wednesday for the fentanyl death of his friend has moved to retract his guilty plea after learning the judge in the case planned to impose a longer-than-expected prison term.

Ryan Walker pleaded guilty last December to criminal negligence causing the death of his friend Shawn Kelly, 23, of Innisfil, who was found dead in his bed by his mother and sister after he overdosed April 9, 2017.

Moments before Walker was to be sentenced, defence lawyer David O’Connor told court he wanted to strike the plea.

“When I realized what you intended to do to my client I was shocked,” O’Connor told Justice Michael Harper. “My client would never have pleaded guilty … it was my clear, clear, clear, understanding that my client was going to get less.”

It was not announced in court what the judge’s sentence was to be, but Crown prosecutor Phil Brissette had asked for a term of up to five years in prison.

“Fentanyl is the most dangerous drug out there,” Brissette said during a sentencing hearing held in December. He asked the judge to send a strong message to drug dealers to address Canada’s “opioid crisis” in Canada, and noted the problem is worsening in Simcoe County.

The case comes back to court March 12 when O’Connor will fight to have the guilty plea struck. 

Outside of court the dead boy’s mother, Denise Kelly, held no sympathy for Walker.

“Drug dealers are low-life scum bags and they should get life in prison for selling drugs that kill somebody,” said Kelly.

She said her son had been clean and she didn’t realize he had relapsed until the morning when she found him, stiff, cold  and blue, in his bed. 

“My son was poisoned,” she said, weeping. “My son got up to go to work everyday but these people don’t work — they choose to sell drugs and poison people instead.”

The Public Health Agency of Canada reported 9,000 Canadians died from opioids from 2016 to 2018 — most of them from fentanyl, a highly potent and addictive drug.

Convictions for drug dealers involved in fentanyl deaths have been on the rise in Canada. In September a Brantford drug dealer was sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling fentanyl to a man who died of an overdose.