A long-time repeat offender in Kelowna is back behind bars once again, less than two months after his most recent release from custody.
John Aronson has a lengthy criminal record dating back to 2006, and he was arrested yet again Thursday afternoon in Kelowna and handed new criminal charges, including five firearm charges, a driving while disqualified charge and two breach of probation charges.
The firearm charges are alleged to have occurred Thursday, while the driving charge is alleged to have occurred on Aug. 24. Details about the incidents that led to the new charges are not known at this time.
Aronson has had less than two months of freedom, after he was
handed a 17-month sentence back in early July for prior firearms offences. But with credit for time already served, he was released from custody.
During sentencing, the court heard he's collected 46 convictions over the past 17 years.
Justice Steven Wilson noted during sentencing that Aronson had a place to live and a job lined up upon his release in July, and Aronson told the judge he was committed to changing.
“I’ve never had a plan like this. I’m driven right now. I’m sorry for what I have done in the past,” Aronson said.
But he had made
similar comments to a judge back in 2019 when he was sentenced for a handful of charges: “I'm sorry for what I did and you are not going to see me back in here.”
During a
May 2021 sentencing for fleeing from police, Judge Clarke Burnett called Aronson's words “meaningless.”
Aronson was released from custody in July on a probation order, an order he's alleged to have now breached. He's scheduled to make his first appearance in Kelowna court later Friday afternoon.
Aronson had been well-known to the police for many years. He was previously arrested in two “high-risk" takedowns in Rutland, in connection with a
violent break-and-enter in West Kelowna in 2017, and he was
shot by police and bitten by a police dog during a takedown outside the CIBC branch near Orchard Park Mall in Kelowna in 2019.
The
very same day he was released from custody after serving time for that 2019 arrest, he fled from police in a vehicle and
crashed into oncoming traffic on Highway 97 in West Kelowna, seriously injuring himself.
In February this year, Aronson escaped from a halfway house in Surrey, cut off his electronic ankle monitoring bracelet and was
found asleep in a car in Peachland with a female passenger and a quantity of drugs.
At the time, police in Kelowna said they had taken “a very dangerous individual off our streets.”