Amanda Vaughan
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, November 28, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - A Yellowknife man who head-butted a police cruiser, causing $645 in damages, was handed a 90-day sentence in court last Thursday.

Crown counsel David Sherwin said the July 17 head-butting incident occurred after police were called to break up a fight between the individual and another intoxicated man.

After the RCMP arrested him, the man began banging his head on the right side of the hood of the police cruiser, leaving dents. The damage was assessed at $645.43, which the 40-year-old man was also ordered to pay as part of his sentence.

The sentencing hearing also encompassed two other charges, the theft of a jacket from a downtown business last March, and an assault that occurred in front of a police officer in June.

According to Sherwin, the assault was witnessed after the RCMP received a report of a woman needing medical assistance outside the Reddi-Mart. The officers arrived at the scene shortly before the accused walked over to an upset-looking woman and punched her.

The man's defence lawyer, Stephen Shabala, said the victim had "taken the accused's glasses and broken them."

In his sentencing submission, Sherwin said the accused was "not a stranger to these courts," and said his record "is frankly, terrible," before mentioning the man had committed "several" assaults and property crimes. The Crown asked for a net sentence of four months on all the charges, considering his pre-trial custody period of two-and-a-half-months.

Shabala said his client suffered a debilitating injury in 1993 that resulted in the man becoming addicted to prescription painkillers, after which his wife at the time "smothered their four-month-old child, and ended up in a mental institution, leaving (the man) with the care of a seven-year-old son."

He said his client's abuse of alcohol in the years following culminated in him hitting "rock bottom" after his son committed suicide in 2006, a fact which caused Judge L. J. Wenden to gasp audibly.

The 90-day sentence is to be served on weekends while the man works as a painter for a Yellowknife company.

Wenden also handed down a three-year firearms ban and ordered him to actively seek counselling for his addictions.