Stint in segregation lightens sentence of Kanata ‘swatter’
A Kanata “swatter” who shut down police stations across the city with fake bomb and gun threats got a lighter jail sentence after spending six months in segregation at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.
Ontario Court Justice Matthew Webber said he took into consideration the time Jonathan Tully spent in isolation at the Innes Road jail when he sentenced the 23-year-old mentally ill man to an additional nine months in jail Thursday.
Webber said he would have been inclined to sentence Tully to something closer to a prosecutor’s request for up to 15 more months in jail if not for the long stint in segregation.
“You endangered the entire city,” Webber told Tully before sentencing him for the online threats to kill a police officer and bomb a police station that sent heavily-armed tactical officers to addresses in opposite ends of Ottawa on Feb. 17.
The practice is known as “swatting” because it often involves the deployment of tactical or SWAT officers to respond to hoax reports. It also resulted in the arrest of an innocent woman after Tully posted the threats on Facebook using a fake account.
“Miscarriages of justice start with those lies,” Webber said.
Tully apologized to the victims and told the court he was sorry he had wasted the police’s time and scared the public.
Tully said he has spent the past six months thinking about how making threats “is not a funny prank.”
“I realize I need to grow up. I’m 23 years old,” said Tully, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to mischief and uttering threats.
Tully previously told the Citizen he was doing drugs when he got the idea for the “stupid” prank from a video game.
Tully’s total sentence was 18 months, but he received nine months credit for the time he had already spent behind bars. Webber recommended he serve his sentence at the St. Lawrence Valley Correctional and Treatment Centre.