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February 27, 2018 - 8:00 PM
LANGUAGE ADVISORY
KELOWNA – A local man was sentenced to eight months in jail for threatening his ex-wife and her new fiancé just hours after he was released from prison for assaulting his new girlfriend.
The man cannot be named because of a court order protecting the identity of both women, but the man has at least five criminal convictions for domestic assault going back to early 2014.
In August 2015 he went to jail for 15 months for an assault on his then-wife and mother of his children. His attack with a belt left her with a cut lip, bruises and abrasions on her body.
He told her he was going to kill her "and I’m going to be smiling as you take your last breath."
As soon as he was let out of jail, he assaulted his new girlfriend.
The woman was present in the court room when Judge Monica McParland heard how, on May 2, 2017, one day after his release from prison, he broke probation by contacting and threatening his ex-wife and her new fiance.
Crown lawyer Jeff Dyment says it started with a phone call.
His ex-wife told police the calls came from an unknown number, so she refused to answer. She knew her ex-husband had recently been released from jail but she and her fiancé were trying to move on with their lives.
Then she began getting texts from the same number.
“(The messages) went on about how I was making an enemy, my roommate was going to die if I didn’t kick him out because he’s male,” she told police.
Judge McParland was shown text messages in which he talks about “the things he learned in jail.”
“Your boyfriend is dead,” reads one. “Your friend better move the fuck out. (He) won’t like his life.”
She called police, who found him hiding in the closet of a home belonging to his new girlfriend, whom he was also not allowed to contact for the same behaviour.
Her statement to police says she was “scared and didn’t know what to do.”
“She said he wasn’t allowed to be there but she wanted to help calm him down,” Dyment said last week.
A psychiatric report prepared for his August 2015 assault sentencing characterized him as an extremely jealous person with anger issues and an inability to control his behaviour especially when high on alcohol or drugs.
McParland sentenced him to 240 days for threatening his ex-wife and her fiance and two counts of breaching probation by contacting her and his ex-girlfriend. With enhanced credit, he had already served the time and was released.
His ex-wife says he has not tried to contact her.
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