Brandon Boland’s testimony was imaginative, fanciful and creative, a Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court judge said last week — what it wasn’t, however, was convincing.
“I do not believe Mr. Boland,” Justice Garrett Handrigan said outright, convicting the 31-year-old Fortune man on criminal charges that included committing mischief that caused danger to human life.
Boland and his accomplices endangered their own lives as well as the lives of Newfoundland Power employees, RCMP officers and members of the public when they damaged the ground wire grid of a substation in Grand Bank in October 2019, Handrigan said, causing a power outage to 2,300 residents of multiple communities in the area.
The court heard at trial from two Newfoundland Power linemen, who said they had been directed by their supervisor to visit the substation in an effort to find out why the power supply was failing to the towns of Grand Bank and Fortune. Upon arriving shortly after 10 a.m., they saw three people: one was taking copper ground wire from a large transformer in the centre of the compound and bringing it to the second person, who was passing it through the fence to the third person, standing outside the fence near a black Nissan. That person was putting the wire in the trunk.
The three people ran when they saw the Newfoundland Power truck approaching, but not before one of them got in the car and tried to drive away. The person got out and ran away after seeing that the truck had blocked the exit.
The damage to the wire grid meant no one could enter the compound until remedial work had been done remotely. It took three or four hours for that to happen and Newfoundland Power was forced to cut electricity to the two towns for about 10 hours.
“Anyone who entered the premises or even touched the chain-link fence around it was at grave risk of being electrocuted or killed by the exposure,” the judge noted.
While RCMP officers were at the site, Boland walked out from an ATV trail, wearing a pair of thick rubber boots. He told the officers he had been scouting for moose and trying to get back to his vehicle, a black Nissan parked near the substation. He was arrested and a subsequent search of the Nissan turned up his ID, cellphone and prescription medication as well as garden shears, pliers, bolt cutters, wire strippers and a quantity of copper wire.
“Anyone who entered the premises or even touched the chain-link fence around it was at grave risk of being electrocuted or killed by the exposure.”
— Justice Garrett Handrigan
Boland told police and the court he hadn’t had anything to do with the substation damage, and that he had been in the area scouting moose and had left his car there, unlocked. He didn’t have any comment as to how the wire had turned up in his trunk.
While the evidence against Boland was circumstantial only, Handrigan accepted it. Boland’s rubber boots matched prints taken from inside the compound, the judge noted, and Boland had been in the area at the time of the break-in. Boland didn’t have a licence to hunt moose and had been prohibited from possessing a firearm at the time, and moose hunting season wasn’t even open. Handrigan rejected Boland’s testimony that he had been scouting moose so he could tell other people, no one in particular, where to find them and had left his possessions in his unlocked vehicle so he wouldn’t lose them.
“I am baffled by Mr. Boland’s reasoning,” the judge said of Boland's explanation, since there was a better chance of his car being broken into than his items being lost in the woods. “In fact, if I accept Mr. Boland’s insinuation of what happened at the substation during his supposed absence, that is precisely what happened.”
Handrigan convicted Boland of break and entry with intent, mischief that caused danger to life, possessing stolen goods and possessing break-in instruments, and remanded Boland into custody to await sentencing at a later date.
Tara Bradbury covers court for The Telegram. [email protected] | Twitter: @tara_bradbury | Facebook: @telegramtara
