GUILTY KIDNAPPERS AVOID JAIL SENTENCE

Two men who kidnapped and beat a drug dealer with a metal pipe and other
objects avoided jail time this week, thanks in large part to their early
guilty pleas and their clean criminal past.

Aaron Forrest, 26, and Matthew Finnegan, 23, were each given six month
conditional sentences with strict conditions attached, after they pleaded
guilty to unlawful confinement and assault with a weapon.

Provincial Court Judge Michael Hubbard ordered the men to complete 160
hours of community work service before March 1, to abstain from drugs and
alcohol and to obey a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.

Finnegan was also ordered to wear an electronic-monitoring bracelet.

The men were among a group of seven arrested Feb. 20 and charged with the
abduction and beating of Chuck Spence, a drug dealer with a lengthy
criminal record.

Speaking at their sentencing hearing Tuesday, Crown counsel Brad Tomlin
said a botched drug deal sparked the assault.

Spence reportedly accepted money from a friend of the convicts in exchange
for the drug ecstasy, but he gave them a bogus drug instead.

"As near as we can tell...it was probably something like Tylenol-3 but it
doesn't appear to be (an illegal) drug at all," Tomlin told the court.
After repeated attempts to get the money back, the attackers plucked Spence
from outside a residence on Alexander Street, beat him with a pipe and
kicked and punched him.

Tomlin said the attackers also brandished a meat clever and stuffed a bar
of soap inside a sock and used it to whip the victim. Spence was
blindfolded at one point then driven out to Somenos Road and beaten some more.

None of the injuries caused serious bodily harm, said Tomlin, who believes
the attackers did not originally intend to go as far as they did in the
beating.

"I don't think at the beginning of this anyone thought it was going to get
as carried away as it did," he told the court.

Forrest, a former student at Shawnigan Lake School and avid rugby player,
said he feels terrible about the assault, which he called a stupid mistake.
"I am extremely remorseful. It was a really dumb thing for me to do and I
would like to get on with my life," he said.

Of the seven people arrested for the crime, only Finnegan and Forrest
pleaded guilty. Charges were eventually dropped against one female and the
three others are still before the courts.