Canada

A former Mountie serving life in prison for killing an Ottawa police officer has been convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in the week before he killed the cop.

An Ontario Supreme Court justice found 46-year-old Kevin Gregson guilty on Wednesday of four counts of sexual assault causing bodily harm and four counts of sexual interference, and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

The victim told court Gregson raped her four times over the span of a few days.

The assaults occurred before Const. Eric Czapnik was stabbed to death Dec. 29, 2009 while he sat in his patrol car at the Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus.

Gregson was convicted last March of first-degree murder in the officer's killing and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

He had been dismissed by the RCMP in 2006 for disciplinary and behavioural problems and was appealing that dismissal at the time of the killing.