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They are the images Richardson François hoped would never surface in public.

By his own admission, the 31-year-old convicted killer who has close ties to a Montreal street gang had sunk to a new low in his life when, on Jan. 22, 2013, he and an accomplice, Jerry Theodore, walked into a jewelry store in Montreal’s Park Extension neighbourhood with the goal of robbing it.

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What they did not expect was that the owner of the store, Vijay Verma, and his relatives would fight back even though François was armed with a pistol and Theodore was carrying a machete. During the melee that ensued, after François pulled out the pistol, one of Verma’s relatives picked up a tray full of nitric acid — commonly used to clean jewelry — and tossed it in François and Theodore’s faces. The acid left lifelong scars on their faces. François also lost 50 per cent of the vision in one of his eyes.

“They are not the best moments of (François’s) life,” defence lawyer Neil Demmerle-Shantz said last week during a sentencing hearing after the Montreal Gazette made a request to have access to recordings from security cameras that captured what transpired after François pulled a gun on Verma. Quebec Court Judge Hélène Morin gave the attorney until Monday to come up with a valid legal reason why the evidence, which became public information once it was placed into evidence on Thursday, should be subjected to a publication ban.