Couple Involved in Stabbing of Belleville Convenience Store Owner Pleads Guilty – Kingston | The Canadian News

Two men behind the brutal robbery and assault of a store owner in Belleville, Ontario, learned of his fate Wednesday.

The owner of “Ro’s General Store” was stabbed multiple times during the armed robbery in October 2019. Jason Ro nearly died during the ordeal.

On September 29, 2021, the couple pleaded guilty to various charges that will send them to prison for years. In return, the Crown dropped the more serious charge of attempted murder.

Sad, shocking, foolish and insensitive – these are the words the justice of the peace used to describe the crimes committed by Kyle Arsenault and Jordan Earle in October 2019 when the two men broke into a north Belleville convenience store. They used bear spray throughout the store and eventually assaulted and stabbed its owner, Jason Ro, eight times. The couple had moved to Belleville from Moncton, NB, just a few months earlier.

The two were arrested and charged three days after the incident, Arsenault at his residence in Belleville while Earle was detained after getting off a passenger train in Moncton.

The two appeared in a Belleville courtroom Wednesday to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of aggravated assault after the Crown accepted that the two did not go to the convenience store with the intent to kill Jason Ro.

2:08Jason Ro recovers after being brutally attacked during a robbery attempt

Crown attorney Lee Burgess explained, “It was the subsequent circumstances in which Mr. Ro persecuted them that caused me to assault him at the time. Therefore, considering the general range of sentences, what we consider appropriate is nine years for these crimes ”.

The convenience store robbery was the culmination of a two-day crime spree.

Arsenault and Earle also pleaded guilty to a long list of additional crimes including mischief, breaking and entering, arson and, in Earle’s case, theft of a vehicle.

They were sentenced to nine years minus the time served on the aggravated assault charge. They will also have to submit a DNA sample and both will face a 10-year ban on firearms once they are released from prison.