Offender will serve sentence in Vancouver

A man who was found guilty of possessing cocaine for the purpose of trafficking was sentenced to a 14-month conditional term Monday.

A man who was found guilty of possessing cocaine for the purpose of trafficking was sentenced to a 14-month conditional term Monday.

Yao Lin Guan, 46, was arrested on Sept. 30, 2009 after failing to pull over when an RCMP officer signaled for him to do so .

Police then searched the vehicle and surrounding area and found a significant quantity of cocaine, which was believed to belong to Guan.

He was later found guilty of evading a peace officer and possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

Yukon Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale sentenced Guan to 14 months of house arrest.

Guan must remain in his residence except when he visits his conditional sentence supervisor, when he is going directly to and from his place of employment, and when he purchases the necessities of life.

He must also serve 120 hours of community service by the end of his sentence. He is restricted from possessing or using a cell phone, and must abstain from possession or consumption of controlled drugs and substances.

Guan will serve his sentence in Vancouver, where he lived with his wife and son prior to moving to Whitehorse.

In 2005, Guan came to Canada from China. In that country, he worked as an engineer for the same construction company for 16 years until he started up his own consulting firm.

He has been married for approximately 20 years and he has a 19-year-old son who is about to enter university. They all live together in a two-bedroom suite in Vancouver.

Since arriving to Canada, he has not held any job for very long, according to a pre-sentencing report authored by Guan’s probation officer, Shayne King.

Guan left his family in Vancouver to come and work in Whitehorse as a cook in a hotel restaurant. He worked there for about a month and a half before he was arrested.

He went back to that line of work while on bail, but he was later found guilty and sent to the Whitehorse Correctional Centre on April 19 to await sentencing. He remained there until Monday.

Guan’s wife came to Whitehorse to support him during his trial.

The report says Guan cited monetary reasons as his motivation for committing the crime. A couple of people presented him with an opportunity to earn quick cash by making deliveries, and Guan fell into the hypothetical trap, says the report.

In the report, King says there area some aspects of Guan’s responses that don’t make sense.

“Such as why an engineer who has $600,000 in savings bonds would decide to come to Whitehorse without his family to work in a restaurant kitchen, later only to be arrested a month after arriving for being involved in drug activity,” says King.

“This is not to say that Mr. Guan was lying, but trying to clear an oddity like this up through further questions proved to be extremely difficult.”

A few days before Guan was arrested, RCMP Cpl. Jerry Walker spotted what appeared to be a drug deal between Guan and another man in the Tags Food and Gas parking lot.

Walker observed the other man approach the passenger side of the Toyota Matrix. Guan handed him something, the two shook hands and the vehicle drove away.

Having worked in the RCMP’s drug section in Prince George, B.C. from 2003 to 2009 and investigated more than 100 cocaine trafficking cases, Walker was familiar with what a transaction of that kind looks like.

So, he wrote down the Toyota’s licence plate number and took note of the man in the passenger seat.

Last Sept. 30, Walker saw the vehicle again and determined the driver to be the same man involved in the
Tags transaction a few days earlier.

He turned on his siren and flashers as an indication for Guan to pull over. Guan did not stop but slowed down, then sped up, so Walker pulled up beside him and yelled for him to stop.

Still Guan would not pull over, so Walker pulled in front of the Toyota, forcing him to stop a short distance up Two Mile Hill.

When the two were stopped, Walker advised Guan he was under arrest for flight from a peace officer. Walker searched the vehicle, but found only $365 in cash. A dog team was then called in to search the vehicle for drugs.

While pursuing Guan, Walker had noticed him fumbling around in his vehicle as he tried to drive, so he advised the dog handler to conduct a search down the road with the canine.

A clear plastic baggy was found on the pavement near the Canadian Tire store. It contained seven split balls of cocaine, individually wrapped.

When he arrested Guan, Walker also seized a cell phone, which received a call later in the day.

A caller asked, “Can you do McDonald’s?”

“Yeah, what do you need?” Walker responded.

The caller answered, “Three.”

Walker then drove to the McDonald’s restaurant on Fourth Avenue in a marked vehicle, in full uniform.

He arrested a man waiting for him for the possession of a controlled substances, but no charges were laid.

The word “cocaine” was never used in the telephone conversation.