Charlottetown man gets jail time for endangering son on 3rd-floor rooftop
CBC
A 41-year-old Charlottetown man was sentenced to more than a year in jail after he pleaded guilty to endangering and threatening his son by coming close to dropping the child from the third storey of an apartment building.
The man was charged back in July after Charlottetown police said they received a call from a concerned resident about an assault at a downtown home.
The caller also reported that a man was seen dangling a child over a third-storey balcony, according to a news release at the time.
In provincial court on Monday, the accused appeared virtually from the Provincial Correctional Centre, where he has been since he was arrested that evening.
He entered guilty pleas to charges of child endangerment, threatening a child and assaulting another adult who was there at the time.
Crown prosecutor Jacqueline MacMillan told the court that a couple of neighbours witnessed the man’s dangerous behaviour that night and called police.
Reading from an agreed statement of facts, MacMillan said the neighbours saw the man stagger to the edge of a balcony while highly intoxicated with his eight-year-old son on his shoulders.
They also told police they heard him say, “I could throw you off.”
The neighbours yelled for him to stop, as the child was screaming and crying. They said the boy grabbed onto his father’s shoulders when the older man's hand slipped from him.
MacMillan said the man did come off the third-floor roof area, but then fell down a set of stairs with the child in his arms, landing on top of him.
The man then challenged his neighbour to a fight. The neighbour was eventually able to hold him down until police came, while another bystander comforted the boy and another child who was present at the time.
Speaking to Judge Jeff Lantz on Monday, the man clarified that he was standing on a flat roof with no railing on the third floor of the apartment building when the incident took place.
In sentencing the man, Lantz described him as a significant threat to his child.
"If something like this doesn't make you go straight and sober for the rest of your life, I don't know what will,” Lantz said.
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