Trio pleads guilty in violent robbery of east London, Ont. jewelry store

The final suspects in the violent armed robbery at the London Gold Buyer outlet in January of 2023 learned their fate on Tuesday. Nick Paparella reports.

It was a brazen morning robbery on Jan. 5, 2023. Three masked men armed with a firearm and a BB gun entered London Gold Buyer on Highbury Avenue just minutes after it had opened for business.

While the three were inside a fourth man was waiting outside in a stolen getaway car.

Within seconds the masked men struck and injured a female clerk and forced the owner Daniel Loewith into his office before shooting him in the chest.

In an agreed statement of facts, “He [Loewith] was in the intensive care unit for eight months in a medically induced coma. He was close to death and had four major surgeries and 31 minor surgeries.”

Loewith’s wife Carol gave the lone victim impact statement in court.

“The lasting psychological trauma of this violent act can never be underestimated,” she said. “Our family will always live these difficult memories.”

She then had a message for the three men in court.

“May they decide to seek peace instead of violence,” she said.

The court heard that minutes after racing away from the store that winter morning, the suspects were all apprehended at gunpoint by officers near Ingersoll. Also recovered was $65,000 worth of jewelry.

In court on Tuesday, Tyreese Brown-Austin, 24, Dahlison Emile, 23, and Jahqwan Bucknor, 23, all from the Toronto area pled guilty to multiple charges including robbery, disguise with intent, and flight from police.

Bucknor, who is free on bail, is being sentenced at a later date.

However, in a joint sentencing submission for Brown-Austin and Emile, the Crown and the defence agreed on a sentence of time already served, partly due to the guilty pleas.

They’ve already spent the equivalent of four years and four months behind bars.

Justice Patricia Moore told the men, “For the sake of some quick money you put someone’s life in jeopardy, and you put your own lives in jeopardy given the possibility of a very long term in prison had Mr. Loewith died.”

“I hope you take this rather lenient sentence and move forward with your lives in a more productive way,” she added.

The trigger man in this case has already been dealt with in court. Twenty-two-year-old Dejan Stephen plead guilty in August 2023 receiving a seven-year sentence.