One day after Chilliwack’s Bradley Van Geel was given four years for attempted kidnapping and assault, his co-accused received her sentence.
On June 8, Chelsey Loranger appeared by video from the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women in Maple Ridge, with B.C. provincial judge Peter Whyte presiding at the Chilliwack Law Courts. Loranger was sentenced on one count of forcible confinement and one count of assault, with Crown prosecutor Aaron Burns and defence lawyer Conor Muldoon presenting a joint submission.
The forcible confinement charge was a plea down from the original charge of kidnapping. Loranger, 30, received time served on the forcible confinement and an 18 month conditional sentence order on the assault. Burns acknowledged the sentence was light for the offences, but he suggested Loranger’s lack of a violent criminal past and her struggles with addiction were mitigating factors.
The incident happened Sept. 4, 2022. On that day, Loranger drove 31-year-old Curtis Shayne Hocken in a silver Audi to the Ryder Lake area of Chilliwack. Van Geel arrived separately on a motorcycle. When he got there, he pulled Hocken out of the car, hit him on the head with his motorcycle helmet and attempted to stuff him into the trunk of the car.
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The entire incident was caught on video and reported to police by people living in the area. Loranger stood back for most of the altercation, but she did try to push Hocken into the trunk of the car with her foot. Hocken was able to escape and run away with blood coming from an open wound on the top of his head. Loranger was arrested minutes later, with residual blood from the assault on the door of her car, and Van Geel was arrested later at his home.
Loranger has been in custody since that day. She’s served 274 actual days, or 416 with time-and-a-half credit.
She has a prior criminal record, almost all of it drug-use related, and she already has a CSO to serve. She was given 22 months in February after pleading guilty to two drug trafficking charges. The new 18-month CSO will be served consecutively, after that one is done. Between the two, the total CSO time will be a little over three years.
Conditions include house arrest until she enters residential drug treatment, a drug and alcohol ban and a no-contact order with Van Geel. She’ll have 100 hours of community service to do, and 12 months’ probation will follow after the CSO is done.
Going to trial for either Loranger or Van Geel would have been complicated by the fact that Hocken passed away just over a month after the incident on Oct. 9, 2022, although Burns said that the Crown’s case would have been strong regardless with video footage and a statement Hocken provided before he died.
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