Four Peel Officers Plead Guilty To Lying in Court About Stealing Scarface Statue
Published August 14, 2019 at 3:09 am
Four peel police officers have admitted to lying on the stand about stealing a statue from an alleged drug dealer five years ago.
According to a judgment given on Wednesday (August 13) in Brampton, officers Richard Rerrie, Mihai Muresan, Emanuel Pinheiro and Damian Savino plead guilty of attempting to obstruct justice in a Brampton courthouse.
The original case from 2014 involved an investigation that resulted in five drug trafficking and possession charges against Lowell Somerville, 35, of Brampton.
Police had a search warrant for his basement apartment in Brampton, where they found more drugs including 24.2 grams of heroin.
Police also had a search warrant for a storage unit Somerville was renting out in Toronto.
In the original hearing, the four officers said nothing had been taken from the storage unit.
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Somerville later testified that after being released from custody, he went to the unit where some of his possessions were missing.
Most notably missing was a metre-tall, “one-of-a-kind” hand-painted wood statue of infamous fictional drug dealer Tony Montana which was covered with beige cloths.
Somerville’s lawyer, Kim Schofield, requested security footage from the storage facility, which later showed shows Rerrie, Muresan, Panheiro and Savino entering the facility the morning of June 24, 2014.
The footage then showed the officers leaving the facility, Rerrie carrying an object covered by a beige cloth, under his right arm.
Rerrie claim he took a heater from a hallway in the facility that he said was in a green or black garbage bag and had a sign taped to it saying it was free. He later testified the heater was thrown out a few days later as it didn’t work correctly.
The other three officers testified that the footage showed Rerrie carrying a large object under his arm, but could not remember what the item was or where it came from.
All four officers have resigned from the force as part of a plea deal.
There is a 12-month conditional sentence for the officers, including six months of house arrest.
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