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A Kamloops man has been released from custody after charges against him for a North Shore shooting were dropped Friday morning.

Tristan Alan Olson, born in 1997, was arrested more than a year after a person was shot near Alexander Avenue on Dec. 30, 2019.

When Kamloops RCMP were called to the North Shore neighbourhood, they found a 24-year-old man with gunshot wounds and a 22-calibre revolver.

The victim survived the early morning shooting and police were able to to find Olson's fingerprints on the handgun, which had its serial number removed.

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By May 2021, Olson was facing five charges including discharging a firearm with intent to wound, aggravated assault, using a firearm to commit an offence, possession of a firearm without registration and possession of a firearm with an altered serial number.

The three charges related to the shooting itself were stayed on June 24 and there was little, if any, mention of the shooting at his sentencing hearing at Kamloops Supreme Court.

Olson was arrested May 22, 2021 and remained in custody until Oct. 6, 2021.

Upon his release, he was sent to live at the VisionQuest recovery centre near Logan Lake as part of his bail conditions. Janse said he stayed less than a month before he fled the treatment facility.

"He was AWOL for quite some time," Janse said.

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Olson was on the lam from October 2021 to May 2022. While he was gone, Olson missed a jury selection hearing, so the court instead skipped a trial and sentenced him in front of a judge.

According to Tate, Olson ran because he was afraid of his impending jail sentence.

"He was facing, he thought, a much more significant sentence," Tate said. "He really was only punishing himself, because in the end he was living in a very squalor lifestyle which he does not want to return to."

On Friday, June 24, Olson pleaded guilty to breaching his probation conditions, possession of a firearm without registration and possession of a firearm without a serial number.

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Having already spent time in custody in 2021, Justice Dev Dley sentenced Olson to six months for time already served, plus an additional day in prison.

Tate said Olson, born and raised in Kamloops, comes from a difficult upbringing, having no contact with his father and his mother died of an overdose "a few years ago."

"He's essentially orphaned from the world," Tate said.

Now that he's already served his time in custody, Tate said Olson is going to pursue work as a landscaper so he can "work himself into a better frame of mind and place in society."

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