Immigrant who pulled loaded gun won’t face deportation

Thomas Kahsay Berhe pointed a loaded Glock 19 9 mm pistol at another driver following a “minor traffic infraction” before fleeing the scene.

Calgary Court house: Wikimedia Commons

Author: Quinn Patrick

An Ethiopian immigrant who pulled a loaded handgun and pointed it at another driver during a road rage incident in Calgary will serve three years in prison, but will not face deportation because his home country has been deemed too dangerous for him to return to.

On June 9, 2023, Thomas Kahsay Berhe pointed a loaded Glock 19 9-mm pistol at another driver following a “minor traffic infraction” that sparked the altercation. He threatened to shoot the other man before fleeing the scene.

Police tracked Berhe down 11 days later while he was a passenger in a vehicle where another person was in possession of a loaded .38 calibre revolver.

Berhe never had his firearms licence or any registration for the gun.

Alberta Court of Justice A.J. Brown sentenced Berhe to three years in prison last month.

However, Brown noted that while sentences longer than six months would normally have subjected him to an “automatic removal order,” Berhe is not at risk because, “Immigration Canada does stay removal orders to enumerated countries that are in a state of war or otherwise subject to violence, danger, terrorism, etc.; currently, Ethiopia is one such country.”

Berhe came to Canada on a student visa in 2015.

Brown also said that in both incidents involving the firearms, they were “fully loaded with five live rounds” and that Berhe’s attack on the other driver “was persistent and ended only when bystanders, at risk to their personal safety, intervened.”

“Police then conducted a high-risk vehicle stop of the Hyundai in which Mr. Berhe was the front passenger and seized from the floor under his seat a .38 calibre revolver.”

The mitigating factors in the case included Berhe’s youth, his lack of a previous record and his guilty pleas. Brown also noted “his remorse, insight and post-offence rehabilitation; and his family and community support.”