A Prince George man was sentenced to another 494 days in jail on Dec. 31, 2024, six months after a judge found him guilty of stealing a pickup truck, driving it while he was prohibited and fleeing from police.
Dallas Lee Blanchette, 38, was tried in provincial court over two days last April. Judge Judith Doulis found him guilty last June of the crimes, which began when he stole a Ford F-350 in the early hours of Oct. 22, 2022 in Prince George.
Doulis sentenced Blanchette to one year in jail for possession of stolen property, six months for driving while prohibited and 18 months for fleeing police, all consecutive to each other.
Blanchette also pleaded guilty to separate charges of possession of a stolen 2017 Ford Explorer, possession of a Keltec 12-gauge shotgun and failure to comply with electronic monitoring. Doulis sentenced him to a combined 390 days in jail, but concurrent to the other jail sentence.
Doulis said Blanchette qualified for pre-sentence custody credit of 596 days, reducing his time remaining to be served to 494 days.
Blanchette will also spend 12 months on probation after his release and is banned from driving for five years.
“Given Dallas Blanchette’s age and record, restorative objectives are less-pressing than denunciation and deterrence, be it general or specific,” Doulis said in her sentencing decision. “According to Dallas Blanchette, he overcame his drug addiction four years ago. Nevertheless, he remained entrenched in his criminal lifestyle. Whether this was the result of preference, habit or inertia, I cannot say.”
A pre-sentence report said Blanchette has Metis heritage on his father’s side of the family, but Doulis said she was “not fully convinced his cultural disconnect played something other than a tenuous role in bringing Dallas Blanchette before the court or affected his moral culpability.”
Doulis found that Blanchette did not have a perfect childhood, but neither was it fraught with dysfunction. His parents worked hard to adequately provide for Blanchette and his four siblings and there was no evidence of family violence or substance misuse.
The pre-sentence report also said that Blanchette claimed he had been sexually assaulted during Grade 2 by a sister of a friend who was in Grade 8. Doulis said Blanchette “traces the genesis” of his substance abuse to the attendance at an alternative education program in Grades 10 and 11. He eventually left high school at the beginning of Grade 12, at age 16.
Blanchette eventually worked at the Mount Milligan gold mine, but began using alcohol and drugs on days off. He lost that job despite the employer offering to provide substance abuse treatment services. In 2017, he was sentenced to 90 days on a domestic assault charge and lost custody of a child. He then made a living selling drugs and carrying out petty crimes around Prince George.
