Woman shot by cop in Westboro pleads guilty to dangerous driving while possessing cocaine, loaded handgun

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Morgan Laplante, the woman who was shot by a cop during a chase through residential Westboro streets in March, has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving while possessing crack, cocaine and a loaded handgun as she fled from police.

Laplante appeared in court on Sept. 25 to enter a guilty plea to four of the 13 charges she initially faced, including breaching a prior court-ordered weapons ban.

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Her lawyer, Joe Addelman, confirmed for the court that her plea was voluntary and that Laplante understood she would forfeit her right to a trial.

Addelman said his client admitted to carrying the gun but “adamantly denies” she pointed it at the two police officers in pursuit.

Laplante was initially charged with pointing the firearm, but that charge, along with the other remaining offences she initially faced, were to be withdrawn as part of the plea.

Surveillance video from doorbell cameras along Avondale Avenue captured parts of the foot chase that ensued in the early afternoon of March 22 after Laplante fled from police and ditched her car on Tweedsmuir Avenue.

Two officers, Const. Paddy McGill and Const. Patrick Wiseman are seen on the video pursuing Laplante and Wiseman is heard repeatedly yelling, “Drop the gun!”

Wiseman fired four shots at Laplante and she was struck twice, as one bullet passed through her left shoulder and the other hit her in the stomach.

According to an agreed statement of facts presented in support of her guilty plea, Laplante was running west on Avondale toward Churchill Avenue when both officers saw Laplante “turn towards the officers to see where they were,” said the assistant Crown attorney, Matthew Humphreys.

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“The police were concerned for their safety as they perceived the handgun being pointed in their direction. As a result, Const. Wiseman fired four rounds from his service-issued firearm and hit (Laplante) twice,” Humphreys said.

Humphreys also noted Laplante has denied pointing her gun in the officers’ direction.

One bullet fired by the officer ricocheted and became embedded in the front door glass of a home on Avondale while the homeowners were present, Humphreys said.

The officers kicked her gun away, handcuffed Laplante, and administered first aid until paramedics arrived and rushed her to the hospital in critical condition.

She declined to speak with a visiting detective a few days later during her recovery, but before he left the hospital room, she asked the detective why police shot her.

“My stick was in my Louis Vuitton purse. I couldn’t run anymore,” she said, according to Humphreys. “I can’t run for 30 minutes, I gave up and threw it in the purse. I tripped over my own feet and the cop shot me while I was on the ground.”

Humphreys presented the judge with still frames of doorbell videos that show Laplante running, holding a pink bag and a cell phone in her left hand and the silver gun “clearly visible” in her right hand. The nine-millimetre handgun was seized by police and found with nine rounds in the clip and one bullet loaded in the chamber.

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Laplante threw away the brown Louis Vuitton handbag during the chase and also discarded the small pink purse, which was found to contain 13.7 grams of cocaine and 14.7 grams of crack, a scale, and small baggies.

She was under a five-year weapons prohibition at the time from a prior assault conviction.

Police also found a black balaclava and a butterfly knife in her bag.

The pursuit began around 1:30 p.m. when police received an alert for a silver Audi with overly dark tinted windows leaving an apartment complex on Lepage Avenue in Carlington.

A patrol officer spotted the car at a nearby Shell station and saw that Laplante had noticed the police cruiser as she pumped gas into the tank.

By the time the officer got back to the gas station, the Audi was already “on the move,” Humphreys said.

The officer activated her emergency lights for a traffic stop when she caught up to the Audi at the intersection of Carling Avenue, heading north to Kirkwood Avenue.

Laplante instead “fled west on Carling and made a sudden turn onto Saigon Court, a dead end,” Humphreys said. She drove over a curb and some large rocks that protected a pedestrian walkway and “briefly became airborne” before landing on Tweedsmuir Avenue.

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The Audi was seen by civilians speeding through several stop signs along the narrow residential street before she abandoned the car, which had sustained “substantial damage,” at the corner of Tweedsmuir and Avondale Avenue.

Laplante was seen by neighbours exiting the car, wearing a ponytail, black ankle boots, blue jeans, and an army-green hoodie, as she reached back into the car and started running.

Witnesses saw her carrying a silver handgun as she ran along Avondale toward Churchill Avenue.

Const. Wiseman was the first officer to arrive, followed closely by McGill as the two gave chase with their firearms drawn.

Wiseman can be heard on doorbell camera footage “yelling at Laplante to drop the gun or he would have to shoot her,” Humphreys said.

Laplante is due to return to court in November to schedule a sentencing hearing.

ahelmer@postmedia.com

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