Fight shuts down Dartmouth court

The Dartmouth courthouse was locked down Wednesday following a disturbance after a sentencing hearing.

Crown attorney Roland Levesque said he was in Courtroom No. 3 speaking with a police officer after thehearing when he heard a "tremendous noise" from outside the courtroom.

"It was like all hell was breaking loose," Levesque said.

The police officer ran out of the courtroom and Levesque followed. He said he saw up to 30 people in the lobby involved in a "huge melee."

"Screaming, yelling, punches were being thrown, people were assaulting each other," he said."It was sort of like a mini riot."

Levesque said the police constable went into the middle of the fray and separated some of the people involved. Several sheriffs deputies also arrived at the scene.

"They were able to finally separate the principle combatants and get them apart, andmore sheriffs responded after that so there was quite a few security personnel here,"said Levesque."They were able to separate the two groups and after that there was just a lot of yelling and hollering."

The hearing was for a North Preston man facing several weapons-related charges, including possession of a firearm for a purpose dangerous to the public peace.

Supporters in courtroom

The accused in that case, Tyrell Ramone Beals, had entered a guilty plea on Wednesday and was sentenced to four months in jail. Levesque said that because Beals was originally supposed to stand trial, there were many people in the courtroom who had been subpoenaed as witnesses.

"There were quite a bit of persons who were also present, I believe, to support the parties that were involved," he said.

Levesque said he saw no weapons during the fight and no one was arrested at the scene. Both parties had filtered out of the lobby by the time Halifax Regional Police officers arrived.

"We're very fortunate nobody had weapons or pulled a weapon, because if somebody had pulled a weapon, I think we could've had some really, really serious consequences here," he said.

Halifax police said one person suffered minor injuries during the fight.

At least two dozen RCMP cruisers also descended on the community of North Preston. RCMP spokesman Cpl. Joe Taplin said a crowd had gathered on Downey Road but they had dispersed without any trouble breaking out.

Taplin said the situation was connected to the earlier brawl at the courthouse.

No weapons scanner

Rick Woodburn, president of the Nova Scotia Crown Attorney's Association, said the Dartmouth provincial courtincident bolsters the prosecution service's call for better courthouse security across the province. Hewants weapons-security systems installed in every courthouse in Nova Scotia.

"You're dealing with an area where some of the worst people in our community are being sentenced and put to jail," he said. "Their families are present and it's high tension. We can see it doesn't necessarily have to involve the court staff or the sheriffs. It can be two warring factions and that can be the most dangerous."

At the Dartmouth courthouse, the sheriffs conduct a risk assessment and decide whether to set up a metal detector that day.

There was no weapons scanner in place on Wednesday.

"The sheriffs do a fantastic job with what they have but they don't have enough," said Woodburn. "They don't have the tools necessary to preventthese kinds of things from happening."

Although there were no weapons involved in Wednesday's melee, Woodburn said having permanentweapons-security systems would "change the atmosphere of the entire building" and deter violence.