温市「6.15冰球暴乱」事件中，一名被电视拍下划面并被控参与暴乱罪名、但辩称因醉酒而失忆的男子，被判三项相关罪名成立。「失忆暴徒」昨日被法官判处30日有条件刑期，以及两年缓刑。
26岁的Spencer Kirkwood被电视台及监视摄录机拍摄到用市府铁围栏砸毁市中心商舖，但在庭上辩称当时饮得太醉，无法记起破坏橱窗的情况。法官随后不接纳其辩词，判处参与暴乱、行为不检和违反法庭禁令的罪名成立，并于昨日宣判刑期。
暴乱时遭到柯克伍德以及其他暴徒破坏的温市中心研科(Telus)大楼，事后花费10,337元进行维修。检控官原本建议法官判处柯克伍德的刑期，为30至45日监禁，外加100至150小时的社区服务。
Stanley Cup rioter Spencer Kirkwood avoids jail
He was convicted in April of participating in a riot and mischief after a trial in which he claimed to have been too intoxicated to remember smashing a window with a street barricade.
VANCOUVER — A young man who joined the mayhem of Vancouver's Stanley Cup riot, only to later claim he was too intoxicated to remember what happened, received a conditional sentence Wednesday after the judge hearing his case concluded he was on the right path to turning his life around.
Spencer Kirkwood called 911 and turned himself into police after he discovered online video footage that showed him using a street barricade to smash a storefront window during the riot on June 15, 2011.
He told police he was so drunk he didn't remember anything about what happened. His lawyer argued at trial his intoxication meant he couldn't be found guilty of participating in a riot.
Unlike other cases in which accused rioters pleaded guilty, Kirkwood contested the charges, prompting the first trial related to the riot.
His lawyer told a sentencing hearing Kirkwood became an alcoholic after he was violently attacked several years before the riot. He has since become sober and has sought treatment for alcoholism and post-traumatic stress, the court heard.
Judge Conni Bagnall, who found Kirkwood guilty in April, appeared to accept the defence's argument that Kirkwood was well on his way to putting his life back together and that a jail sentence would only disrupt that.
She sentenced Kirkwood, who was 25 at the time of the riot, to a 30-day conditional sentence that will require him to abstain from alcohol, followed by two years of probation with the same condition.
"You're already doing what I want you to do and what your community wants you to do," Bagnall told Kirkwood, who spent much of his sentencing with his head bowed down and occasionally appearing to choke back tears.
"This will add incentive."
The Crown had asked for a jail sentence of between 30 and 45 days.
Kirkwood wasn't part of the massive crowds gathered downtown to watch the Vancouver Canucks play, and lose, against the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.
Instead, he was at a friend's house in the Yaletown area of downtown Vancouver, a short walk away from the epicentre of the violence. When he heard about the riot, after a night of drinking, he decided to head down and check it out.
Kirkwood joined a crowd that was busy smashing the windows of a Telus outlet, according to video of the incident played at his trial.
Initially, he could be seen on the sidelines pumping his arms in the air with a broad smile on his face. Before long, he used a street barricade to take a turn smashing the window — first by himself, and then with the help of another rioter.
Kirkwood never denied it was him in the video, but his lawyer, Jonathan Waddington, argued his client's intoxication meant he couldn't have had the intent to participate in a riot.
Waddington told court Kirkwood's substance abuse stems from an incident in 2007 when Kirkwood was severely beaten in a case of mistaken identity. Kirkwood was at home in Chilliwack when a group of assailants entered his apartment, apparently believing they would find drugs stashed inside, said Waddington.
They used kitchen shears to cut through his finger. They broke his ribs. They stomped on him until a bone above his eye was broken. He was knocked unconscious.
At some point during the assault, one of the attackers was talking to somebody on the telephone and learned the group had targeted the wrong apartment, said Waddington.
Some of the attackers were caught, but not all of them, said Waddington, and Kirkwood was left with anxiety and constant fear.
"What we have is an individual who was beaten — beaten badly, for no reason other than a mistaken apartment — dealing with that in a way that was inappropriate but in a way in which young men sometimes do: by drinking," said Waddington.
"In a way, it is a mental-illness aspect that has pushed Mr. Kirkwood into this problem, but he's being treated for that. He has insight into that."
Waddington told the court Kirkwood is working "in the north" at a dry work camp that doesn't allow drugs or alcohol. Kirkwood has a girlfriend, which Waddington said has become a positive influence on his life.
The Crown warned the judge Kirkwood was unlikely to abide by his conditions.
Crown lawyer Patti Tomasson noted Kirkwood was arrested in March 2012 for driving with alcohol in his system, which violated one of his bail conditions. He was also convicted of breaching that condition.
Tomasson suggested the incident demonstrated Kirkwood would not change his behaviour even if ordered to by the court.
The riot started in the final minutes of Game 7, when jersey-clad fans gathered at a massive outdoor viewing party set several vehicles on fire.
By the end of the night, the rioters damaged more than 100 businesses, set fire or vandalized dozens of cars, and caused an estimated $3.7 million in damage.
So far, the Crown as approved riot-related charges against 228 people, according to statistics provided by B.C.'s Criminal Justice Branch.
Of them, 147 have pleaded guilty and 97 have been handed sentences ranging from discharges to more than a year in jail.
Nine people are currently awaiting trial, including one whose case is headed to B.C. Supreme Court.
Crown prosecutors are still considering whether to lay charges in dozens of other cases.
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VANCOUVER - The sun was still illuminating the glass towers of a trendy Vancouver neighbourhood when Spencer Kirkwood stood looking out from an apartment balcony, downing beers after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup, and remarked on black smoke wafting up from the downtown core.
"What would possess people to do this?" he remembers saying to friends, as they learned from afar that chaos had broken out following the hometown upset in Game 7 in June 2011.
That's the last moment the 26-year-old told police he recalls before he went on to join the destructive mob that swept through the city streets.
A videotape of Kirkwood's interview with a police officer where he describes that conversation and other details of the events that night was played by the Crown during Kirkwood's trial Tuesday.
Kirkwood was charged with participating in a riot, mischief and breach of bail. By pleading not guilty, he has become the first person to go to trial among 110 accused rioters who pleaded guilty to their own roles.
Court heard Kirkwood told a Mountie and a 911 operator, who he called to report himself two days later, that his mind is completely blank about what occurred.
"I just wanted to turn myself in because I was just disgusted and I thought that would be the right thing to do," Kirkwood says in the videotaped interview with RCMP Const. Cathy MacDonald.