A Toronto man who pleaded guilty to 10 crimes, including armed robbery and carjacking, one of which was committed in a Cambridge parking lot in 2021, has been sentenced to four years in prison following a lengthy stint in pre-trial custody.
Babison Vilvarajah was arrested by York Regional Police in November 2021 on 13 charges related to a series of carjackings and armed robberies.
Between Oct. 13 and Nov. 5 of that year, a number of incidents occurred in York Region, Toronto, Halton, Peel and Cambridge, including seven robberies and five carjackings.
A 2017 silver Mercedes C43, which was stolen on Sept. 19, 2021, was linked to the crimes.
Police charged Vilvarajah with seven counts of robbery with a firearm, two counts of possession of property obtained by crime, and four counts of fail to comply with a release order.
At the time of his arrest, he was already before the court for similar offences dating back to 2019, police said.
In an agreed statement of facts issued at Vilvarajah's sentencing last month by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Crown detailed each of the man's crimes, including one that occurred in Cambridge.
On Oct. 30, 2021, just after 9:30 p.m., a man was in a Cambridge parking lot after arranging to meet Vilvarajah in response to a Kijiji ad selling computer cards.
The man expected to meet "a party to whom he would trade two rubies worth $12,700 for some computer cards."
Vilvarajah drove into the parking lot in a grey Mercedes. He got out of the vehicle, pointed “what appeared to be a black firearm” at the victim, and told him to hand over his belongings. The man gave Mr. Vilvarajah his wallet, his cell phone and the rubies.
Just prior to that incident, Vilvarajah and an accomplice committed a series of robberies using the stolen Mercedes, and targeted Range Rovers in two carjackings in Oakville and Brampton. In some of the incidents, victims were assaulted and injured in the struggle.
Police used surveillance video from a gas station to identify Vilvarajah pumping gas into the stolen Mercedes, located the vehicle at a Toronto home on Nov. 4 and placed a tracking device on it.
Officers conducted mobile surveillance of the vehicle during a subsequent robbery and on Nov. 5 executed a search warrant on the home where the vehicle had been parked. They found keys to another stolen vehicle, property taken from the Cambridge victim and clothing worn during the robberies. They did not locate a firearm.
Police arrested Vilvarajah that day.
The Cambridge victim was one of two to provide victim impact statements.
He reported that "he and his family felt scared, worried, and unsafe in their home because his wallet with all his identification was taken in the robbery. He and his family left their home and did not return. His financial loss because of the robbery was over $10,000."
The judge considered multiple aggravating factors in sentencing Vilvarajah, who was 22 at the time of his arrest.
He was 20 at the time of his first offence and pleaded guilty "which is a sign of remorse and willingness to take responsibility for his wrongdoing."
The judge also called his pre-trial custody "harsher than is usually the case, primarily because of frequent and sometimes sustained periods of lockdown due to persistent staffing shortages and at times COVID-19 health protocols."
The Crown sought a global sentence of nine years in jail, less credit for pre-sentence custody calculated at one and a half to one.
Vilvarajah was detained for 839 days at Central East Correctional Centre in the Kawartha Lakes region during his initial period of pre-trial detention. That equates to 1,259 days or 42 months calculated at one and a half to one.
Broken down, the sentence includes three years in jail concurrent on each of the 2019 robberies plus one year in jail consecutive on each of the other two counts, for a total of five years.
On the 2021 offences, the Crown sentenced Vilvarajah to four years in jail concurrent on each of the robberies, to be served consecutively to the sentence for the 2019 offences, and 60 days concurrent on the fail to comply.
On the Cambridge offence the Crown issued a sentence of four years concurrent to the total sentence for the other offences.
