A screenshot from the footage captured on home security video of the incident which was posted to Facebook. (File photo)

Dale Boyd

Osoyoos Times

A woman who pleaded guilty to a bizarre home invasion in August 2018 has had her banishment from the Town of Osoyoos overturned by the B.C. Court of Appeal.

Sharon Constance Forner, 45, pleaded guilty to one count of breaking and entering to commit an indictable offence (assault) in provincial court in Penticton and was sentenced to two years in a federal institution in August 2019.

In a court of appeal decision released on April 7 Justice Christopher Grauer found Judge Greg Koturbash “erred in principle in a manner that impacted the sentence he imposed.”

“The result was a disproportionate sentence that failed to take proper account of the impact of the appellant’s addiction and mental health issues on her moral culpability, as well as the absence of any history of violent acts,” Grauer’s written decision states.

Forner’s sentence was reduced by the appeal court to 20 month imprisonment, less time served.

• Read more: Two years in jail, banished from Osoyoos for strange home invasion

“I would also remove from the probation order the term preventing the appellant from being within 50 km of Osoyoos, B.C.  I would not otherwise interfere with the terms of probation.”

In 2018, Forner was sentenced to a three-year probation order including a curfew and orders not to be in the presence of children under the age of 14, not to possess a knife or a mask, not to be in possession of alcohol and to not have contact with the victim or her family.

Forner attempted to enter the home on 78 Avenue in Osoyoos on Aug. 8, 2018, wearing a wig and yellow gloves, in the strange incident which was caught on home surveillance video.

Forner initially asked the homeowner if she could see her newborn baby, then after being asked to leave and having the door shut in her face, Forner re-entered the home brandishing a large kitchen knife over her head before being fought off by the victim — the mother of a newborn at home alone with her four-year-old child present as well.

“Most are left wondering and concerned how something like this, something straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock horror movie, could happen in a small town in our valley,” Koturbash said while handing down his sentence in 2018.