VANCOUVER — A Stanley Cup rioter who once won a Miss Congeniality title during a beauty queen contest is changing her plea of not guilty to guilty.
Sophie Laboissonniere, who was to appear in Vancouver provincial court on Thursday for a pretrial conference for a scheduled spring trial, didn’t show up. Instead, her lawyer said she would now plead guilty. Her next court date is set for Jan. 3.
The Richmond woman, 20 at the time of the 2011 Stanley Cup riot, had pleaded not guilty in May to two charges. One was for participating in a riot and the other for break-and-enter, after allegedly looting London Drugs that night.
Her eight-day trial scheduled for April and May, will now be cancelled following her guilty plea, court heard on Thursday.
Laboissonniere’s lawyer, David Baker, said his client had taken one bottle of water from London Drugs.
Laboissonniere, who had won the Miss Congeniality title in the 2011 Miss Coastal Vancouver pageant, tagged in her January 2011 blog, since been taken down: “2011: A new year to make permanent changes.”
Her arrest and charges went viral on the Internet and the story was picked up around the world.
About 90 per cent of the 300 or so riot suspects are male and the few dozen female rioters have received an inordinate amount of attention.
London Drugs lost $425,000 in merchandise on the night of the riots, sparked by the Vancouver Canucks’ loss to the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.
Total damages that night are estimated at $3.8 million.
