A British Columbia man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for firing a handgun indiscriminately at a beach crowded with families during a Canada Day celebration in Osoyoos, injuring one beachgoer. Steven Marlo Gallagher, a 32-year-old father of four children, was convicted of multiple firearms offences following the July 1, 2022, shooting that sent holiday revellers fleeing for cover. One of the bullets passed through a man’s hip, causing substantial blood loss, after Gallagher provoked an altercation with the man, identified in court as William Krystik, and his friends. The court heard that Gallagher was also with friends at the beach when he began to kick sand at Krystik and his group. Two of Krystik’s friends asked Gallagher to stop, but he did not, Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick wrote in her decision on March 7. Gallagher then approached the group and started a fight with Krystk and another man. Others soon joined the melee before Gallagher pulled the handgun from his shorts and started firing randomly, into the air and into the sand where Krysitk and others were still fighting. “The many people on the beach heard the shots from Mr. Gallagher’s gun and began fleeing for their safety,” the B.C. Supreme Court judge wrote. Beachgoers traumatized Gallagher and his friends ran to their vehicle and sped away from the scene. “In the turmoil surrounding the group of friends' flight from the beach, they discovered that Mr. Krystik had been shot through the hip and he was bleeding profusely,” the judge wrote. Krystik was treated by paramedics and later admitted to two hospitals where he recovered from his wound. “The impact of Mr. Gallagher’s crime, however, goes well beyond Mr. Krystik’s physical wounding,” the judge wrote. Victim impact statements provided to the court described lingering “emotional and psychological trauma,” with one young woman saying “her life is still consumed with fear, anxiety and stress” which she is managing with counselling and medication. “That is still not the end of the impact of Mr. Gallagher’s crimes,” the judge wrote. “The event attracted news coverage in the community, to the extent that it was not already well known by the hundreds of people who were on the beach that day and fled for their lives.” Gallagher had a lengthy criminal record at the time of the shooting, including multiple convictions for crimes perpetrated with handguns. ‘Blind luck’ that no one was killed At the time of the Canada Day shooting, he was awaiting trial for a May 2021 break-in and arson at a pharmacy in Oliver, north of Osoyoos. He was later convicted and sentenced to three years and nine months for the offences. “It is beyond dispute that Mr. Gallagher’s decisions – to bring a loaded firearm to a crowded beach, then purposefully bring that firearm to a fight that he started, and then intentionally discharge that loaded handgun in the above circumstances – was incredibly reckless and put everyone on that beach in serious danger,” the judge wrote. “The fact that he only wounded Mr. Krystik with less-than-life-threatening injuries was only blind luck. The fact that he did not wound or kill anyone else at that beach was also only blind luck.” The judge handed Gallagher a global sentence of seven years in prison, comprising concurrent sentences of six and a half years for aggravated assault, four years for pointing a firearm and seven years for reckless discharge of a firearm. His prison term for the Canada Day shooting will not commence until after the three-year, nine-month sentence he is already serving.
