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The victim told court he still suffers panic attacks and fears going outside. He filed a victim impact statement describing his nightmares, and the pain he experiences in his back and head since the attack.

“She was a planner and organizer to the robbery, she participated as the driver and made no attempt to limit or discourage the acts of violence,” the judge said, after a jury found Brahaney guilty in March 2017 of robbery, aggravated assault, kidnapping and conspiracy to commit robbery.

Her accomplice Ali was sentenced six months less a day for robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery for her part in the scheme.

Brahaney was also found guilty, but has yet to be sentenced, in a separate jury trial for her role in another violent robbery in which an intellectually disabled man was lured on social media before he was blindfolded, beaten and confined to a dog cage for 24 hours in Brahaney’s basement. In that case, a ransom demand was made of the victim’s family.

Crown prosecutor Matthew Geigen-Miller called the crimes a co-ordinated pattern of violence over a 10-day period in the summer of 2014.

In the Vanier case, the Crown argued for a sentence of eight to nine years for kidnapping, while Brahaney’s defence lawyer, Michael Smith, called for no jail time and two years of probation after credit for time served.

Justice Labrosse ruled the penalty should fall in the range of four to six years for a case that was “not a classic kidnaping for ransom … the kidnapping developed as part of the robbery, there was a short period of confinement, Ms. Brahaney was not an active participant in the aggravated assault and there was no ransom.”