Two of Phillipe Lugela’s older brothers, Nelson and Samuel, are serving life sentences for unrelated fatal shootings outside Calgary nightclubs
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Calgarian Phillipe Lugela will have to serve a few more years behind bars before he can flee Alberta and his notorious family name.
Justice Paul Mason on Monday agreed with Crown prosecutors Donna Spaner and William Tran that a penitentiary term was warranted for Lugela on a series of charges, including possessing a restricted, loaded handgun.
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Defence lawyer Rebecca Snukal had sought a 15- to 18-month jail term, which with credit for pretrial custody would amount to time served, plus probation to assist in his rehabilitation.
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Snukal said a term of his probation could allow him to move to Ontario, where he has an uncle, and escape his notorious surname.
“We know he can’t be here, he’s a Lugela,” she said during sentencing submissions last month.
“He needs to go (away) and he recognizes that.”
Two of Lugela’s older brothers, Nelson and Samuel, are serving life sentences for unrelated fatal shootings outside Calgary nightclubs.
Nelson Lugela murdered Calgary Stampeders defensive back Mylan Hicks outside the Marquee Beer Market on Sept. 25, 2016, shooting Hicks, who had done nothing to the killer, twice as he left the bar.
Four years later, on Sept. 12, 2020, Samuel Lugela fatally shot Abdurahaman Indiris as he was leaving a southeast hookah lounge.
Mason said that although Phillipe Lugela didn’t fire his loaded Smith & Wesson handgun, or point it at anyone, his possession of the weapon constituted a serious crime.
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The Calgary Court of Justice judge said that offence would justifiably draw a 5½-year sentence. Mason also said offences of possessing a firearm while prohibited and having a gun in a motor vehicle would normally draw consecutive one-year terms.
But he said a total 7½-year sentence would be excessive in the circumstances, so he reduced the total punishment to six years.
With credit for time on remand the offender will have about four years and 9½ months left to serve.
Mason said Lugela’s relative youth was a factor in his favour. The now 23-year-old was just 20 at the time of his Jan. 7, 2021, arrest during a high-risk takedown by members of the Calgary Police Service tactical team.
A subsequent search of his vehicle, which had been tracked from Calgary to Airdrie, uncovered the loaded handgun in his trunk.
At the time of his arrest Lugela was on bail for charges related to a May 21, 2020, shootout in which he fired as least six shots at a fleeing vehicle in a northeast residential area. Lugela was shot in the exchange.
He was handed the equivalent of a 3 1/2-year sentence on charges related to that incident, a term he has completed.
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