‘Bizarre & Unhinged’: No jail time for elderly bank robber who committed federal crime hoping for jail time to escape bad roommate

Eric Hansen pointed a gun at a teller at the Chilliwack CIBC in April 2023 leading to bank staff trauma, a prolonged standoff Emergency Response Team members

What follows are brief descriptions of two scenes I witnessed. One was nearly two and a half years ago, the other was this morning, Sept. 22, 2025. Hundreds of people witnessed the first one. Exactly 12 people saw the second. Only two other people saw both situations play out that day in 2023 and today, both from very different perspectives than I:

Scenario 1: April 27, 2023, after noon

Eric William Hansen walked into the CIBC at Salish Plaza in downtown Chilliwack. He withdrew several hundred dollars from his account. Then he pointed a firearm at a teller, said he was robbing the bank and that he wanted the police to pick him up. The teller put $320 in Hansen’s Walmart bag, the standard small amount bank employees have on hand for such circumstances, and an amount less even than he just withdrew. When 911 was called, general duty police officers descended in large numbers followed by the RCMP’s heavily armed Emergency Response Team members who then engaged in a prolonged standoff. All available police resources, including front line members, the Integrated Emergency Response Team, RCMP Air Services and Police Dog Services proceeded to the area. Dozens of people, including myself, watched from a distance in the plaza, on side streets, and from near the courthouse across the street as officers conducted the operation that lasted more than an hour. Customers and bank employees were trapped inside in fear, wondering what Hansen might do next. Eventually the bank’s general manager, Kathy Parker, heroically diffused the situation convincing him to give her the gun and no one was hurt.

Scenario 2: Sept. 22, 2025, 9:30 a.m.

I walked into courtroom 205 at the Chilliwack Law Courts for Hansen’s sentencing hearing this morning, Sept. 22, 2025. I’ve never met or even seen a photograph of Hansen. Parker was there, as was the teller who had a gun pointed at her, the spelling of whose name I didn’t get. There were several lawyers in the small courtroom, some for other matters. There are only 20 seats, two rows of five on each side. I sat in the aisle seat behind a tall, lithe-looking man, at least 6’1”, maybe 6’2”, holding a bubble-wrapped package on his lap. He had grey wispy hair, two hearing aids attached to the back of his ears, ears that also held the arms of his glasses. He sat with a similarly thin tidy, grey-haired, well-dressed woman with glasses that matched her shawl. She had a notepad on her lap. As I sat down, someone I would later learn was defence lawyer Jessica Dawkins, came over to the man sitting in fornt of me, leaned over and told him that there would be a short delay as court staff set up equipment so he could properly hear the proceedings. You can see where this is going. She also told the man that, yes, he would probably be allowed to bring his ostomy bag with him if he was taken into custody. It was Hansen.

'Bizarre and unhinged'

“The circumstances are as peculiar as they are unexplained,” Judge Peter Whyte said as he read out his sentencing decision for what had to be a terrifying bank robbery, particularly for the teller who the court heard is still traumatized, a bank robbery committed for a reason that Hansen told investigators he realizes now was as “bizarre and unhinged as it would be to anyone else,” Judge Whyte said.
A bank robbery of this involving a firearm kind is considered a serious, violent act in our criminal justice system and would ordinarily demand incarceration, a federal sentence in the range of two to nine years.

“However, your circumstances are not… ordinary,” Judge Whyte said, in agreement with the joint submission from Dawkins and Crown counsel Randolph Robinson.

“I doubt Mr. Hansen even understands why he committed these offences.”
Judges are required to follow and not deter too far from prior cases of similar type, precedents, and any decision at any level that is not successfully appealed can then serve as a precedent for other cases in the future.

For that reason, Judge Whyte made great pains to explain that giving consecutive conditional sentence orders of 18 months and six months less a day – in other words, a non-federal sentence with no physical incarceration in prison – would “have little precedential value as it is tailored to your unique and bizarre circumstances.”

Now 66 or 67, Hansen sat at the defence table wearing large headphones connected to the sound system so he could hear the proceedings properly. His sister sat in the gallery listening attentively.

Why would an otherwise “normal,” mostly sane 64-year-old man walk into a bank, withdraw some of his money, then point a firearm at a teller telling her he was robbing the bank and receiving $320, less than the amount of his own money he withdrew?

Hansen moved from Ontario to Chilliwack in March 2023, just one month before the crimes. Feeling down and depressed, he looked for a place to live and found one with a woman he didn’t know, which worked well for about two weeks.
Soon he realized she was using methadone and had used heroin in the past. Then “various unsavoury individuals started attending,” and his roommate began to play music at all hours.

“His thinking became clouded and his reasoning became impaired,” Judge Whyte explained. “He became desperate to escape.”

That’s when he concocted a “bizarre and unhinged” plot to commit an offence that would get him incarcerated for a lengthy period of time so he wouldn’t have to deal with the environment he was living in.

He tried to buy a firearm but was unsuccessful, so he bought an airsoft gun, which can look identical to a real firearm to non-firearm users.

On April 27, 2023, he woke up, went to buy a coffee as he often did then drank it on the courthouse steps. He then went to Subway and ate a meal. Then he walked to the CIBC bank and did something “entirely out of character and unexplainable even to him.”

After several psychological examinations and reports, he had a potential NCR defence (not criminally responsible by reason of mental defect), but he abandoned that. Judge Whyte stated that from what he read, an NCR defence would have failed anyway.

The impact on staff and the teller in particular was substantial, according to her victim impact statement. She is unable to work, and the “tremendous trauma visited upon her given Mr. Hansen’s conduct,” has impacted all spheres of her life.

Judge Whyte also recognized the teller and Parker’s “courage and willingness to participate in these proceedings.”

Incidentally, the RCMP recognized Parker for her courage with an award at the annual Officer in Charge Awards Ceremony in March 2024.

"Her calm and empathetic approach proved instrumental in persuading the suspect to surrender, what she believed to be a firearm," according to the RCMP release about the awards.

Sentence explained carefully

Because the conditional sentence order (CSO) of 18 months house arrest for the robbery, followed by six months less a day for the firearm usage in the robbery, followed by three years probation was a joint sentence, Judge Whyte had to use the “public interest standard” as outlined in the 2016 precedent-setting Supreme Court of Canada case of R v. Anthony Cook.

Using that, a judge must consider departing from a joint submission only if it is “markedly out of line with the expectations of reasonable persons aware of the circumstances of the case that they would view it as a breakdown in the proper functioning of the criminal justice system,” that from R v. Anthony Cook, citing the case of R v. Druken (2006).

Judge Whyte pointed to the “real palpable benefit” of a joint submission, namely avoiding a trial and forcing witnesse to recount what they saw and be cross-examined about it. In agreeing to the joint submission, which might seem on a cursory glance to be grossly under what would be “ordinary” in this case, Whyte was careful to explain his reasoning.

“I’m satisfied that it is not an unlawful sentence,” he said. “It’s unusual, but I can find no case that tells me it would be an unlawful sentence.”

Judge Whyte was firm when addressing Hansen as he stood before him.
“Mr. Hansen, I’ve struggled to understand your conduct. You withdrew far more money from your account than you received with the handgun.”

He also made it clear that violating the conditions of a CSO or the subsequent probation, five years in total, could result in a return to the Surrey Pretrial Centre.

“Most people who are convicted of these types of offences do not get conditional sentence orders,” Judge Whyte said. “I will not tolerate any breaches of this order.
“Your victims and the community will not accept breaches of this order.”

Mandatory minimum sentences in criminal justice cases are premised on two patently false notions: One, that all offenders, all human beings, are identical regardless of age, life history, and mental capacity; and two, that the circumstances of all acts committed are identiccal as described in the Criminal Code of Canada.
It’s ridiculous.

As this case illustrated, sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the patent incongruity of an offender and the criminal act they commit. Sometimes it’s nearly impossible.

NOTE: In some prior stories about this case published elsewhere, and that are still online, Hansen is described as someone with “a significant criminal record” in B.C. In fact, this Eric William Hansen had no other contacts with the B.C. provincial court system prior to this conviction. There is another Eric Wiliam Hansen (born 1996) who has an extensive criminal history.

-30-

Want to support independent journalism?
Consider becoming a paid subscriber or make a one-time donation so I can continue this work.

Paul J. Henderson
pauljhenderson@gmail.com
facebook.com/PaulJHendersonJournalist
instagram.com/wordsarehard_pjh
x.com/PeeJayAitch
wordsarehard-pjh.bsky.social