Man sentenced for resisting peace officer

Breaking out of a building, not into it, landed a Lethbridge man in some hot water.

Adam Richard Filipcic was hiding in a residential garage in January and was actually trying to get out when police arrived.

At first he refused to comply when police ordered him to leave the building, but later, with the aid of a screw driver, he managed to free himself. Unfortunately, he didn’t drop the screw driver and police drew their weapons. Filipcic was attacked by a police dog then taken to the ground with a kick to the knee by an officer.

Filipcic only used the screw driver to get out of the garage and didn’t intend to use it as a weapon, Crown prosecutor Vaughan Hartigan explained during a hearing this week in Lethbridge provincial court. But police showed “reasonable apprehension” when Filipcic approached them with the screw driver.

“He got the worst of it,” Hartigan said.

Filipcic pleaded guilty to resisting a peace officer and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. He also pleaded guilty to unauthorized possession of a prohibited weapon for which he was also sentenced to 30 days. That sentence will run concurrently with the first.

The charge stems from an incident last September when Filipcic got into an argument with another man at a Lethbridge residence. The man struck Filipcic in the arm with a stick or pipe, and Filipcic reacted by spraying the man with pepper spray.

Court was told even though Filipcic was acting in self defence, he should not have had the pepper spray.

Follow @DShurtzHerald on Twitter