Sentencing adjourned after disagreement on assault facts

A Lethbridge man who threatened to shoot people working at a Service Canada office in the city, had his sentencing hearing adjourned after he rejected allegations that he also punched another man in an unrelated altercation.

Bradley Kim Bergman pleaded guilty Monday in Lethbridge provincial court to a charge of threats to cause death or bodily harm and two charges of assault, but after he disagreed with the alleged facts relating to one of the assaults, both cases were adjourned to Friday.

Bergman was charged with uttering threats and one count of assault stemming from incidents on Aug. 9, 2021 when he entered a Service Canada office in the city and became upset with a commissionaire. Bergman pushed the commissionaire, kicked him in the groin, and threatened others in the office.

“Mr. Bergman then looked at another commissionaire and said, ‘remember this face; I’m going to come back and shoot everyone with a gun,’ “Crown Prosecutor Adam Zelmer told the judge.

The following month a man called police and said another man had assaulted him at the northside homeless shelter and soup kitchen. Zelmer said Bergman punched the victim several times in the chest and face and ripped the earrings from his ears before he was restrained by shelter security staff.

When police arrived Bergman told them the victim “should have just taken his beating and left it at that.”

“I didn’t punch him four or five times,” Bergman told his lawyer. “I didn’t punch him at all. It was a wrestling match. That’s bulls--t.”

Bergman told court he and the other man wrestled, and he admitted putting the man in a headlock, but he insisted he never threw any punches.

“That’s how his earrings got tore out, when I had my arms around his head. I didn’t punch him. I pushed him, he pushed me, other people jumped on top of me, took me down to the ground.”

Although Bergman acknowledged the assault charge, he rejected the allegations he punched the other man, and the matter was adjourned to Friday to set a date for a hearing to determine the facts of the case.

“I’m prepared to accept the guilty plea on the basis of the push, with the Crown’s right to provide further evidence if they want to do that,” Judge Jerry LeGrandeur said. “Of course, he can respond to that evidence if he so chooses.”