A man charged with murder in Wallaceburg has been jailed one year for a sexual assault that took place in Lambton County two years earlier.
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A man charged with first-degree murder in Wallaceburg in 2023 has been sentenced to one year in jail for a sexual assault that took place in Lambton County two years earlier.
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The latter incident took place while Marc Lebelle was in his mid-60s and was driving a young, vulnerable girl around in a taxi.
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“Really just an absolutely abhorrent and highly discreditable course of action on the part of Mr. Lebelle, to take advantage of this most unfortunate soul that he victimized in this way,” Justice Mark Poland said recently in a Sarnia courtroom.
Lebelle shook his head as he listened to the prosecutor read a statement of agreed facts over a video feed connecting the jail he’s in and the Sarnia courtroom, but not because he disagreed with what was said.
“He’s disgusted with himself and the whole situation,” defence lawyer Terry Brandon said.
The court heard Lebelle, a Wallaceburg resident and a driver for Tam’s Taxi, picked up a teenager who’d been drinking at a party on Oct. 31, 2021. As the girl got in the red minivan taxi, she recognized Lebelle, a driver known in the area as Frenchie.
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She climbed in the backseat, but asked if they could make a pit stop on her way home. Lebelle agreed.
Following that stop, she sat in the front seat. While sitting there, she touched him on various parts of his body to stop his sexual advances.
“Lebelle interpreted these touches as flirtation,” assistant Crown attorney Aniko Coughlan said while reading the statement.
The girl tried to push him away and told Lebelle, “No,” but he continued and aggressively grabbed at her breasts and forcefully grabbed at her vagina, leading to a rip in the crotch of her leggings, the court heard. She eventually escaped behind the backseat, but he kept trying to reach behind and rub her thigh. He eventually dropped her off at home.
The girl, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, wrote a statement which was read in court on how the incident has affected her.
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“Since Oct. 31, 2021, I feel that I was robbed of my childhood,” she wrote.
She said she knew something was wrong when Lebelle didn’t take the most direct route to her home and she’s now scared to get in other people’s vehicles.
“I get anxiety and feel like I want to throw up at the thought of getting in a cab again,” she wrote. “What he did to me, I cannot forget.”
Poland called her letter very sad.
“It’s clear that this assault perpetrated by Mr. Lebelle has had a very adverse impact on this young woman,” he said.
Brandon said her client’s life was relatively ordinary before this incident, which cost him his relationship. She conceded this was a heinous crime and he was in a position of trust as a taxi driver.
Both Brandon and Coughlan asked for one year behind bars and Poland agreed to impose the suggested sentence. This sexual assault case was prosecuted summarily by the Crown, making the maximum penalty 18 months in jail.
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Lebelle, who was out on bail in this case, initially pleaded guilty to the charge on Oct. 3, 2023, and a pre-sentence report was ordered. But he was arrested less than a month later, on Oct 30, 2023, and charged by Chatham-Kent police with first-degree murder. The Sarnia case took about two years to complete.
Lebelle, who now will be on the sex offenders list for 10 years, has been in jail since his arrest two years ago and he hasn’t tried to get bail again, Brandon said. He used some of that time in custody to fully serve his Sarnia sentence.
“He will not be seeing any anticipated release for a significant period of time at present,” Brandon told the judge.
The homicide case is scheduled to return to a Chatham courtroom on Friday, records show. The charge there hasn’t been tested in court.
A Wallaceburg man, 68, was charged with murder after officers found another Wallaceburg man, 64, dead in an Elgin Street home on Oct. 28, 2023, Chatham-Kent police said at the time. Police did not identify either man, but said they knew each other and called it an isolated incident.
Court records obtained days later by the Chatham Daily News identified the accused as Lebelle. The dead man’s identity is covered by a publication ban.
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