The strait where the March 2019 controversy took place. A local will spend almost a month in jail after drinking a glass of wine to celebrate his recent engagement, violating a condition of his sentence. Brandon Matechuk returned to court in Kelowna on Thursday morning for his conviction after admitting last month that he had violated the “non-alcoholic” condition of his suspended sentence. Matechuk appeared in court last year when he was sentenced to nine months probation for pointing a shotgun at his neighbor and threatening him on the morning of March 22, 2019, over a dispute over the placement of rubbish bins. Conditional punishment is served outside prison, under various conditions. If the conditions are violated, the rest of the sentence or part of it can be considered in custody. As a result of his guilty plea, Matechuk was sentenced to three months’ house arrest, followed by a three-month curfew, followed by three months without any restrictions on leaving his home. But one of the 15 conditions of the nine-month conditional sentence was abstinence from alcohol all the time. On the night of May 6, six months after his conviction, Matechuk and his girlfriend were celebrating their engagement the night before. Matetchuk’s curfew had just expired. He says he drank a glass of wine with his current fiancée to make a toast to their engagement and went home shortly after 11pm On his way home from Vernon, Matechuk crossed an intersection just as the light turned red and an RCMP officer pulled him over. Matechuk was ordered to take a breathalyzer test and fired 0.037%. While this is below the legal limit for the operation of a vehicle, he violated his non-alcoholic status by ordering him on probation and was arrested. “It’s very serious that he violated it [conditional sentence order], is for a very stupid reason. However, it is at the lower end of the spectrum compared to other possible violations, “Matechuk’s defense lawyer Nicholas Jacob said on Thursday. “If I were the accused, I would ask the court to consider possibly not taking any action, given that he spent a few days in prison and that his CPC was extended by one month. “But Mr Matechuk has given me specific instructions to agree with the Crown’s position.” As a result, both Crown Prosecutor David Ruse and Matechuk agreed to spend an additional 27 days in jail before being released on parole. “I just wanted to apologize, it was a stupid mistake and I should not have done it,” Matechuk told Judge Gary Weatherill. “It was incredibly stressful and I will definitely not do it again, I just want you to know.” Matechuk’s fiancé, who was not involved in the 2019 incident, appeared in Kelowna court on Thursday to support him. Matechuk’s initial allegations stemmed from an altercation with his neighbor near Richter Street in Kelowna and Birtz Avenue, which had been simmering for several weeks, until they reached his head on the morning of March 22, 2019. What happened before the threat was some dispute during the sentence, but Matechuk’s girlfriend then said she had a “verbal exchange” with their neighbor as she moved trash cans behind her car in the morning. Crown prosecutor David Rousseau said during the sentencing last November that Matheuk’s girlfriend then claimed that their neighbor “said he was going to bring his friends cyclists to deal with her”. She called Matechuk “crying uncontrollably” and told him that their neighbor had threatened her. Matcechuk then knocked on his neighbor’s door, pointed a shotgun at him and said, “I’m not fighting, I’re not calling the police.” The incident of March 22, 2019 provoked a mass reaction of the police in the area and Matechuk was arrested. In addition to the shotgun, police also found an SKS rifle with five loose cartridges in a bag and no trigger lock on the gun. Matechuk did not have a firearms license at the time. “For me, it was not rubbish bins, it was about trying to be safe at home,” Matechuc told Judge Weatherill in November. “I just did it the wrong way.”
