Andrew Raven
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 01/05) - A Gameti man who choked his wife during a drunken rage in the small North Slave community last March has been ordered to live with his mother for the next four months.

The 40-year-old carpenter, who pleaded guilty to assault Tuesday in territorial court, will also have to abide by a 10 p.m. curfew and stay away from alcohol. If the father of three follows those conditions, he will not face jail time.

"This was certainly a serious assault," said Judge Robert Gorin, who handed down the sentence.

"(But it) is not in the interests of his rehabilitation to spend time in jail."

The man was arrested March 13 following an unprovoked attack on his sleeping wife a day earlier.

According to Crown attorney Sandra Aitken, the woman awoke to find her husband sitting on her chest with his hands wrapped around her neck.

Their 13-year-old son intervened in the melee, pulling his father off the couch. The woman escaped serious injury though she did have bruises on her neck and face.

The man, who was convicted of assaulting the same woman in 1997, was drunk at the time, Aitken said.

Aitken recommended he spend 30 days behind bars and said the strangling was even more shocking because the couple's son was present.

Gorin gave the man a four-month conditional sentence that included 60 hours of community service along with the provision that he live at his mother's house.

The court heard there would be no court workers in Gameti to oversee the order until the fall.

The man will likely report to probation officers in Yellowknife by telephone.