The son of a former Hells Angel member who was gunned down outside his Vancouver home in 2010 is one of two men recently sentenced for a three-week crime spree two years ago that stretched from Surrey to Abbotsford.
Dillon Juel Stanton, 29, was sentenced July 4 in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, along with co-accused Nicholas Lenord Rick Traviss, 22. The judge’s written ruling was not posted online until last week.
Both have been in custody since their arrests in March 2017, and each was sentenced to an additional jail term of seven years and five months.
Stanton and Traviss both previously pleaded guilty to several offences, including robbery, using an imitation firearm, assault causing bodily harm and possession of a restricted firearm.
Stanton is the son of Juel Stanton, who was killed Aug. 12, 2010 at the age of 41. He had been expelled from the Hells Angels earlier that year, according to media reports at the time.
Police announced on March 28, 2017 that Stanton and Traviss had been arrested for a series of commercial robberies and break-ins that occurred between Feb. 20 and March 13 of that year throughout the Lower Mainland.
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They initially faced at total of 22 charges, but seven more were later added.
Mounties at the time said they had recovered a replica handgun during the pair’s arrest. They subsequently searched a storage locker in Coquitlam and found property that had been reported stolen in several break-ins.
Police said they also recovered 13 firearms, at least four of which had illegal modifications, including filed-off serial numbers.
They also seized cigarettes, vaping supplies, video games, gaming consoles, laptop computers, lottery tickets and other items.
The crime spree involved seven different areas: Coquitlam, Burnaby, Surrey, Langley, Port Coquitlam, Abbotsford and Mission.
In one of the robberies – on March 12, 2017 at a hemp store in Port Coquitlam – the pair zap-strapped an employee’s hands behind his back and had him lie down on the floor.
When the man got into a struggle with Traviss, Traviss removed an imitation gun from his pocket, and hit the man in the head. The employee suffered a concussion and later received staples for his head wound.
In a robbery at a convenience store in Coquitlam, Stanton carried a hockey stick, which he used to strike an employee when she hit him with a stick.
The last robbery of the pair’s crime spree took place in Abbotsford, where they targeted a convenience store in the 32000 block of Marshall Road.
According to court documents, Traviss entered the store first, wearing a toque and a scarf covering his face.
He pulled a fake gun out of his pocket and pointed it at an employee.
Stanton then entered the store, also with his face covered and carrying a duffel bag.
The pair filled the bag with items that included almost 1,500 lottery tickets, 90 packages of cigarettes, $1,000 cash, and a cash register.
They fled in a GMC Terrain rental vehicle, which police located later that day in Langley while the pair were each validating lottery tickets at two gas stations that were close together.
Three of the guns that turned up in the subsequent search of the Coquitlam storage locker had been stolen from a home in Mission on March 8, 2017, according to the court documents.
In his ruling, Justice James Williams stated that Stanton and Traviss were close friends at the time of their offences and both were in the midst of “serious drug addictions.”
“They went on what could fairly be described as an outrageous crime spree to support those dependencies,” Williams said.
“There is no question that the experiences that (the victims) went through in the course of those robberies were terrifying.”
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