Man pleads guilty to being unlawfully in house

Police didn’t have to look far for a suspect who walked into a residence and threatened one of the occupants.

At about 6 p.m. on Feb. 24 Ryan Lloyd Gerard entered the residence, where he approached the basement suite, knocked on the door but left after the female tenant refused to let him in.

Gerard, 25, went upstairs, entered the residence through the unlocked door, then knocked on a bedroom door and identified himself as Ryan. The tenant, who has a grandson named Ryan, let Gerard in then realized his mistake. He told Gerard to leave, and Gerard said if he called the police he would regret it.

Gerard did not become violent, however, and he ultimately left the residence before police arrived. After police took statements from the residents, they walked outside and noticed Gerard looking inside the police cruiser, and he was arrested.

“Suffice to say without any more details, he was grossly intoxicated,” Crown Prosecutor Drew Gillespie said Thursday in Lethbridge court of justice, where Gerard pleaded guilty to one count of being unlawfully in a dwelling house.

When asked by the judge if the facts related by the Crown were true, Gerard couldn’t tell her.

“He doesn’t know if it’s true,” Lethbridge lawyer Claudia Connolly said. “Ryan tells me he has almost no memory of anything, but he admits that he has severe addiction issues and that he was grossly intoxicated.”

Gerard was sentenced to four months in jail, minus nine days he has already spent in custody on the charge. He will also be on probation for one year after he is released, during which he must comply with several conditions, including he not contact the complainants.

“He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know these people, but that doesn’t take away from how they were affected,” Connolly said.