Surrey brothers Roman Arinder Gill and Shaun Narinder Gill have each been sentenced to five years in prison for shooting up a Guildford house and “engaging the police in a high-speed car chase.”
Justice Baljinder Kaur Girn presided over the case in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster. The brothers pleaded guilty in February to discharging a prohibited gun on Dec. 29, 2023 in Surrey. Roman also pleaded guilty to unlawfully possessing a loaded Glock semi-automatic pistol and Shaun pleaded guilty to failing to stop for police in a pursuit.
The Crown and defence made a joint submission for a five-year sentence for each. Girn gave Roman 15 days credit for time served and Shaun 263 days credit for time served as well as a one-year driving prohibition.
The judge told the brothers, “I want to reiterate to you that you are extremely lucky to be receiving what appears to be a light sentence.
“I hope that this sentence will serve as a strong deterrent to both of you and it is my hope that the court will never see you back here again,” Girn said. “You have so much going for you. You have the support of your family. You have careers that you can come back to. You should not be coming back to this courtroom. Rather you should strive to be contributing members of society with successful careers and family lives.”
The court heard that on Dec. 26, 2023 Roman rented a Range Rover from Vancouver Exotic Motorsports for a week and two days later looked up the address of a house in Guildford which in that year contained a licenced daycare. On the afternoon of December 29 – the daycare was on a winter break – the brothers went to the house in the Range Rover, with Shaun driving and Roman in the front passenger seat. He got out, walked down a path beside the house and fired at it 11 times with the Glock, with one of the bullets penetrating the master bedroom on the second floor.
Girn noted that three people were in the house at the time. “Miraculously, no one was injured by this shooting. Many people who lived in the neighbouring homes heard the shooting and called 911.”
The brothers sped off. A constable learned about the shooting over his police radio, spotted the Range Rover speeding south on 192 Street and flipped on his lights and siren. It didn’t pull over, and the officer eventually lost sight of it.
They parked it in Langley. Police found the gun near some train tracks, along with the keys for the Range Rover.
The brothers were born and raised in Surrey. Shaun is 30 and Roman is 27.
“Neither accused provided any details as to the circumstances surrounding their involvement in the commission of the offences,” the judge noted in her reasons for sentence. “While it would have been useful for the court to hear this, I do not make any adverse inferences as a result.”
“No doubt some wish that I would override the proposed joint submission and impose a harsher sentence in this case,” Girn said. “While such wishes are understandable in the wake of these tragic offences and, to a degree, are informative of what a segment of the public perceives as ‘the right thing to do,’ they are not what informs how the propriety of joint submissions are assessed. Judges are afforded considerable discretion when it comes to imposing sentences, but such discretion is not unfettered.”
The mandatory minimum sentence for intentionally discharging a prohibited weapon is five years.
Girn found the brothers’ moral blameworthiness “extremely high. The risks they took were significant.”
The guilty pleas, she noted, saved weeks of court time. “Had the matter gone to trial, several weeks would have likely been spent on the pre-trial applications and more on the trial. As I have noted earlier, this joint submission represents a carefully calibrated outcome in a case that likely had risks for both sides.”