Man gets 5.5 years for robbing same store twice

Wearing black clothing with his face masked, Joshua Marcotte walked into the Ruth Street Circle K convenience store in Saskatoon’s Queen Elizabeth neighbourhood on Dec. 8, 2021, pointed a gun at the employee and demanded money.

Three months later, on March 16, 2022, he did it again, this time taking 20 packs of cigarettes along with about $100 cash, a Saskatoon provincial courtroom heard during his sentencing last month.

On the day his trial was scheduled to begin, Marcotte, 20, pleaded guilty to robbery with a firearm, robbery, carrying a .177 caliber pistol for a dangerous purpose and two counts of wearing a mask while committing an offence. The Crown agreed to stay five other charges in exchange for the plea.

According to the Crown’s facts, the store clerk put a tracking device in with the cigarettes during the second robbery, allowing police to track Marcotte to a nearby apartment on Hilliard Street.

He initially denied any involvement, but allowed police to search his home. They found the cigarettes and the gun, and Marcotte confessed to both robberies.

“(Officers) could see the (store surveillance) video and compare it, and there was no question it was the same person who had done it,” Crown prosecutor Melodi Kujawa told court.

She said Marcotte has no prior criminal record and incurred no breaches while he was released on electronic monitoring, which played a role in the Crown and defence jointly proposing a prison term of five and a half years.

Judge Doug Agnew accepted the joint submission — a four-year mandatory minimum sentence for robbery with a firearm, another one and a half years for the other robbery, and concurrent sentences on the three remaining charges.