Ex-Degrassi actor jailed for 3 months: Pleads guilty to robbery conspiracy, Acquitted last year of murder charge

JORDAN HEATH-RAWLINGS
STAFF REPORTER

A former child actor who was acquitted of both murder and attempted murder charges last year in two unrelated incidents pleaded guilty earlier this week to conspiracy to commit robbery.

Tyson Talbot, 33, was sentenced by Justice Maryka Omatsu to three months in jail and placed on probation for 18 months after entering a guilty plea on Monday in the Ontario Court of Justice, court documents show.

Talbot, along with four others, was accused of conspiring to commit a robbery between March 1 and 20 of last year, according to the documents.

The same charges laid against Kelly Hogue were withdrawn on Monday due to a weak case, Talbot’s lawyer, Sid Freeman, said yesterday.

Two others charged with Talbot have also been charged in a string of sensational, forcible-confinement robberies that took place last winter.

But Freeman said there was no connection between those robberies and Talbot and Hogue’s case “but for their association with the people” alleged to have committed the other robberies.

Freeman said she took great pains in court to point out that “this robbery was considered, investigated and appears to have been abandoned…. It never occurred.”

Talbot first came into the public eye as a member of the cast of The Kids of Degrassi Street on CBC in 1980, and later played Jason Cox for three episodes of the Degrassi Junior High series.

He has several assault convictions on his record, and faced two high-profile trials last year.

In July, he was acquitted of second-degree murder stemming from an altercation in the Gerrard St. E. and Broadview Aves. area on Nov. 29, 2002 just a few blocks from where the Degrassi series was filmed that left 23-year-old Christopher Shelton dead.

Then in December, he was acquitted of attempted murder in a March 2002 incident in which 44-year-old Sebastian Santacroce was attacked with a knife outside a bar on Danforth Ave. Prosecutors could not prove that Talbot was the person wielding the knife.

After his second acquittal, he remained in custody to face the latest charge.

Before pleading guilty this week, Talbot had already been in custody for 10 months, Freeman said.

“Mr. Talbot is looking forward to putting his life back together and becoming a productive member of society when he rejoins it,” she said.