TORONTO — The Ontario Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal from a Hamilton man who was convicted of aggravated assault and firearms offences in connection with a shooting incident in 2016.
Christopher Marcelo Claros was arrested in May 2016 near Marathon, after OPP laid spike belts on Highway 17 to stop a westbound vehicle.
He was subsequently charged by OPP with firearms offences including possession of a prohibited weapon – a sawed-off shotgun that had been thrown out the window of the car before Claros was apprehended.
The gun was discovered later at the side of the highway by a civilian who notified police.
At his trial, the Crown said Claros had used the gun to shoot another man at an intersection in Hamilton two days earlier.
The victim was wounded with buck shot in his lower extremities, but the injuries were described in court as "not serious."
Court was told the gun had been stolen, and had Claros' DNA on its surface.
He was sentenced in 2018 to slightly less than five years in prison.
On appeal, Claros argued that the trial judge erred in finding that the victim's injury was caused by the same shotgun that was found near Marathon.
In court, the judge had told him "there is no expert evidence about that gun, but I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt on the other evidence that it was the gun that you used" in the shooting.
The judge said the wound "could have been caused" by the gun, noting that it "was not caused by an ordinary bullet from a rifle or a handgun."
In upholding the conviction, the appeal court said "The police recovered a shotgun on the side of the road, wrapped in a shower curtain. The appellant's DNA was found on the gun. The gun had been reported stolen in Alberta. The appellant traveled from Alberta to Hamilton to visit his son on the day of the shooting. After the shooting, it would appear that he was traveling back to Alberta with the shotgun when he was arrested. Accordingly, there was compelling evidence that it was the same gun."
The court added that although proof that the same shotgun was used in the incidents in Hamilton and Marathon would have strengthened the identification of Claros as the shooter, "the appellant's liability did not turn on the gun being the same. Moreover, [other] evidence identifying the appellant as the shooter was already compelling, if not overwhelming."
The court also dismissed Claros' appeal of his conviction on three other grounds.
