Back-to-back armed robberies, HMP beating will extend inmate's sentence

A St. John's man with a lengthy criminal record could end up with another three years in prison for his role in armed robberiesand for an assault at the jail in St. John's.

Eric Douglas Squires, 37, is already serving what's left of a five-and-a-half-year sentence for an armed robbery from 2013.

Squires has a 19-page criminal record, including 21 convictions for break and enter.

At provincial court in St. John's Friday, a video was played showing Squires pummeling another inmateat Her Majesty's Penitentiary a little more than a year ago.

The other inmate didn't put up a fight andsuffered fractured bones in his face as a result of the attack.

The mantold officials the assault was unprovoked, and that Squires had called him a rat.

Squires's lawyer told the courtthat Squires went after the other inmate because of something that inmate had done to a female relative of Squires.

Armed robberies

Squires and his accomplice William Peter Edwards were sentenced in 2015 for holding up Marie's Mini Mart on Elizabeth Avenue on Oct. 13, 2013.

The men got away with cigarettes, cash and lottery tickets.

A judge found Squires guilty and he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison in Jan. 2015. Edwards pleaded guilty.

Squires has pleaded guilty to robbing the same Marie's Mini Mart on Oct. 21, 2013, also withEdwards.

He also held up the Orange Store on Pennywell Road nine days earlier.

The Crown and defence have both asked for another two and a half years for the two armed robberies, and six months for the jail assault.

Both robberies were motivated by Squires's addiction to morphine, the court was told Friday morning.

Asked how long he has been using drugs, Squires told Judge Lori Marshall he began taking Valium when he was 11 or 12yearsold to deal with the death of his father.

Marshall will hand down her sentence on Tuesday.