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Man sentenced to four years after stabbing pizza-restaurant employee during robbery

Worker attacked while trying to stop robbery
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Blaine Christopher Isherwood, 27, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault of an employee at a Victoria pizza restaurant. TIMES COLONIST

A Victoria man has been sentenced to four years in prison after stabbing a Panago Pizza employee during a failed robbery attempt last month.

Blaine Christopher Isherwood, 27, pleaded guilty to the aggravated assault of the employee at the Vancouver Street restaurant, which occurred around noon on Dec. 6, 2021.

Provincial court Judge Mayland McKimm accepted the joint submission from Crown and defence and imposed the four-year sentence, but said “it is most assuredly at the very bottom end of the range I would impose.”

Court heard that two men were preparing dough at the back of Panago Pizza when Isherwood walked by carrying an umbrella. Surveillance footage showed Isherwood glanced in, then took another look and saw that no one was behind the cash register. He placed the umbrella on the ground, walked to the register, took $100 cash out and started to walk out.

The two men working in the store began to chase him. One grabbed his backpack. The other grabbed his arm and shoulder.

Isherwood told them to let him go, then took out a knife that looked like a combat knife, said prosecutor Hayden Shook. One employee told him to put down the knife, but he didn’t. He stabbed the other man in the bicep, causing serious injury, and ran off.

The injured man was taken to hospital and spent a number of days there undergoing surgery.

“It will take months to heal the wound and regain movement and strength,” said Shook.

Police officers were able to identify Isherwood from the surveillance video. He was arrested the next day in the 900-block of Pandora Avenue.

Shook noted that Isherwood wasn’t even masked when he went into the store. “There was no real attempt to conceal his identify. It appears to be an opportunistic theft driven to fund his drug habit.”

Isherwood has three previous convictions for robberies where he used a knife, said Shook. In June 2012, he used a knife to rob an Empress employee on their way to work. Two days later, he robbed a man, stabbing him in the shoulder behind a building downtown. He was sentenced to two years for these offences.

In August 2018, he robbed the night manager of the Arbutus Hotel at knifepoint and received a three-year sentence.

Defence lawyer Chantelle Sutton said Isherwood has struggled with addiction.

“It was very much an opportunistic theft. To use his own words, he was struggling with a lot of dope at the time,” said Sutton. “His use of violence was his way of escape. There wasn’t an intention to use violence. It was a panicked way of trying to escape the people who worked there.”

Isherwood was shocked to hear how badly injured the employee was, said Sutton, who went through the victim impact statement with him. “He felt terrible.”

Isherwood wants to take programs that are available in the federal system and hopes to move to a new community when he is released, said Sutton.

McKimm said he accepted that Isherwood did not intend violence but, like many in the drug community, he was armed.

“In my view, the starting point for the sentence should have been six years,” said the judge.

ldickson@timescolonist.com