Before the prosecution decided to end his trial, Michael Gero told the jury hearing his murder case that Sherri Thomas was very emotional after having an abortion four days before she died.
He also told the jury he believes that just before Thomas died she had discovered text messages he had exchanged with another woman.
On Monday, a stay of proceedings was placed on the second-degree murder charge filed against Gero in November 2013, after Thomas, 19, died from a bullet wound to the head in their apartment on Grand Blvd. in Notre-Dame-de-Graçe. Prosecutor Jacques Dagenais decided he could no longer prosecute Gero for murder after having heard his testimony.
Although the murder case was over, Gero was sentenced Wednesday on two charges he pleaded guilty to this week related to how he was not supposed to be in possession of the firearm that killed Thomas. Superior Court Justice Hélène Di Salvo agreed with the joint recommendation that Gero serve one more day behind bars before he is released. His 4-year sentence exceeds the time he has served already if one considers that each day served behind bars counts as a day and a half to an accused awaiting a trial.
Michael Gero is charged with illegal possession of a gun in the death of his girlfriend Sherri Thomas.
Gero testified in his own defence on Feb. 20 and the Montreal Gazette obtained a recording of what he said. He told the jury that he didn’t see Thomas shoot herself. But he said Thomas was very emotional before she died and that he believes she shot herself while he was taking a shower. He said that the week before she died she had informed him that she was pregnant with their child and that he had taken her to a clinic near the Berri-UQAM métro station to get an abortion.
“We had a discussion about keeping the kid. I told her, ‘Right now I’m trying to better my life’ and I couldn’t afford another child in my life. We came to an agreement,” he said. “It was quiet (after the abortion). Things were different. She wasn’t really talking with me. It was like she was on a downer.”
He also testified that four days after the abortion, while he was showering, on Nov. 19, 2013, Thomas apparently found text messages on his phone he had exchanged with another woman. He said he heard Thomas call him a ‘f–king a–hole’ while he showered. Gero said he and Thomas had argued about the same woman in the past.
“I thought, ‘Oh snap, she checked my phone,’ ” Gero said. “It just popped into my head.”
“Then I hear like a big thump noise on the floor. Then I heard nothing,” he said, adding he got out of the shower and found Thomas lying on the kitchen floor with his firearm lying next to her.
“Right away I started to panic,” he said.
While proposing a joint sentence recommendation on Tuesday, Dagenais described Gero’s youth as “turbulent” and added that his mother turned him over to a foster home. By the age of 16, Gero had his first conviction for robbery and was sentenced to a one-year prison term. One year later, at the age of 17, he was convicted a second time, for trafficking in crack cocaine and was sentenced to a four-month term in youth detention.
In May 2011, Gero was part of a trio of men arrested for the armed robbery of a man who was making deliveries for a convenience store in Lachine. The victim was attacked with a knife and Gero was initially charged with attempted murder. Six months later, he pleaded guilty to armed robbery and conspiracy to do the same. The attempted murder charged was stayed and he was sentenced to an overall prison term of 12 months and two years of probation. As part of the same sentence, he received a court order prohibiting him from possessing firearms for a 10-year period.
He was still subject to that order when Thomas died. During his testimony last week, Gero told the jury he panicked because he knew he was not supposed to have the pistol in his apartment, and tossed it onto the roof of the three-storey apartment building where the couple lived on Grand Blvd. The police found it hours later and one of Gero’s fingerprints was found on the pistol.
“We will never know what actually happened on the morning of Nov. 19, 2013,” Di Salvo said before reading from her sentence. The judge had told Dagenais last week that she found contradictions in Gero’s testimony.
