A prohibited driver who frequently caused police chases with children on board was sentenced to eight-and-a-half months in jail last week.
Ryan Alfred Winczura pleaded guilty April 7 to five counts related to four separate incidents. Three times in November and December last year, Winczura took off in his SUV when officers tried to pull over the 35-year-old who has an extensive and unenviable criminal driving history.
In one instance in June he got up to 135 kilometres an hour on Prest Road while fleeing Const. Michael Sabulsky who later found Winczura’s vehicle parked on an incline in his backyard, adjacent to the Meadowlands Golf Course parking lot. A witness on the course told police they saw a man exit the vehicle “with a screaming child in hand.”
Then on Nov. 4 the prohibited driver was spotted by police who ordered him to pull over. Winczura refused, responding that he needed to drop his young son off at school.
“‘You are fleeing,’” Crown counsel Rebecca Beeny quoted the officer in court on April 7. “‘No I’m not,’” Winczura responded, before taking off in a 2010 Land Rover.
The Mountie clocked him hitting 102 kilometres an hour near Little Mountain elementary. He then dropped his child off at a different school, returned home where he was arrested and his vehicle impounded.
Then on Nov. 29 yet a different officer spotted Winczura in a different SUV, this time a GMC Yukon. He again took police on a chase that culminated in him being blocked by two City of Chilliwack employees. The court heard that once he was stopped, a young girl got out and was screaming at police, and Winczura got out and began yelling at the girl. He then resisted arrest and a second younger child was found inside the SUV.
Then on Dec. 27, he did it again, spotted on Highway 1 clocked at 155 kilometres per hour before exiting on Vedder heading south. Following RCMP policy, that chase was called off but the officer went to his home and waited.
Not long after, Winczura drove in and, when approached, slid out of the passenger door with a young girl and ran into the house. Crown counsel Anna Tosso told the court the officer managed to get his foot in the door, but Winczura still wasn’t giving up.
“He slammed the door on his foot multiple times,” Tosso said. After a stand-off he was finally arrested.
At the court date on April 7, his lawyer asked Judge Richard Browning for a 30-to-60-day intermittent sentence, while Crown asked for 10 months in jail and a three-year driving prohibition.
Because of the nature of the offences and the similarity between them, Browning ordered a pre-sentence report, which can take up to six weeks but because Winczura is in custody was prepared quickly.
In Chilliwack provincial court on April 27, Browning issued various consecutive sentences for the four separate incidents adding up to seven-and-a-half months more jail time along with a month time served.
He is ordered to attend counselling, and prohibited from driving for thee years, along with 12 months probation. He is not only not allowed in the driver’s seat of a vehicle he is not to be present in a motor vehicle other than public transport without permission from the court.
He also has to pay his victim fine surcharge 60 days after his release from jail.
