Conditional sentence for firing shotgun during argument

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This article was published 23/10/2021 (1525 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man who fired a shotgun out his bedroom window during an argument with his wife was handed a one-year conditional sentence Thursday afternoon after a judge warned him of the dangerous turn the day could have taken.

The Brandon Sun is not naming the 50-year-old man to protect the identity of the victim. He previously pleaded guilty in late July to uttering threats, unsafe storage of a firearm and careless use of a firearm.

The incident started on Nov. 14, 2019, when the man’s wife called 911, Crown attorney Brett Rach said. The two were arguing and she reported her husband grabbed a shotgun and fired a round out the window toward her car.

He then threw the shotgun down and the woman locked the firearm up, Rach said.

When police arrived they arrested the man for careless use of a firearm.

Rach told the court the man kept the shotgun loaded in the corner of the bedroom. While the accused had a gun safe, he kept it unlocked. It also contained several other guns with ammunition.

In a statement to police, the man said he fired the shotgun out the window “in an attempt to annoy his wife,” Rach said.

The incident started early in the morning at approximately 5 a.m., when the couple’s alarm went off. The victim asked him to turn it off and from there, Rach said, it escalated.

“[The accused] stated something to the effect that she was going to have a hard time getting to work today and used the stock of the gun to smash a hole in the bedroom window. He then put the barrel outside the window [and] pulled the trigger,” he said.

A few days earlier, the couple had another argument where the man threatened to kill his wife, the Crown said, noting the domestic violence aspect.

“He stated ‘I’ll kill you,’ and moved toward her like he was ready to choke her,” Rach said. The woman tensed up and pushed his hands away.

Rach asked the judge to sentence the man to a year in jail, noting he told police he smashed the window “for dramatic effect to frustrate [the victim].”

“[The man] not only essentially used the gun in a threatening manner, he discharged it. It wasn’t just shown in order to make a point, it was discharged towards a road. That raises public safety concerns as well,” he said.

Defence lawyer Myles Davis said his client served in the Canadian Armed Forces for more than a decade, including in combat overseas. That experience resulted in PTSD and other mental health issues.

The man is also remorseful, Davis said, and has changed his ways since the domestic violence incident.

Davis asked the judge to sentence him to a conditional sentence order of between six months and a year in length. Conditional sentences allow people to serve a jail sentence in the community, but they could go to a real jail if they breach the order.

Speaking to the court while wearing a long green coat, the man said the incident shouldn’t have happened and he is working on himself.

Judge Patrick Sullivan said the situation is difficult as the man went 50 years without a criminal record, but must have terrified his wife the dangerous night of Nov. 14.

“You shot the gun out the window, but the presence at all of a firearm … in the course of a domestic argument is terrifying,” he said to the man, who sat in the witness box in the middle of the courtroom.

“Your intention might have been … to annoy or interrupt the argument but from the perspective of someone in my position, that is dangerously close to heading in a different direction.”

Sullivan said a jail sentence was needed to send a message to the community. He sentenced the man to a one-year conditional sentence order with a 24-hour curfew. He also banned him from owning weapons for 10 years.

» dmay@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @DrewMay_