Man gets weekend jail for breaches

Police found Steven Adam Gelinas at Fairhaven with meth, woman he was ordered to stay away from

Two people who can’t seem to stay away from each other will now be kept apart — at least on weekends — by a jail cell. Steven Adam Gelinas, 36, was sentenced Wednesday in provincial court in Penticton to 21 days behind bars after admitting to one count of breaching a probation order.

RCMP Cpl. Don Wrigglesworth found him Dec. 22 on a bed with a woman at the Fairhaven affordable housing complex on Skaha Lake Road, eight days after Gelinas was convicted of assaulting her.

Gelinas was sentenced to 18 months’ probation for that offence and ordered to have no contact with the woman and not go to Fairhaven, which earlier this year was converted from the Bel-Air Motel.

During the Dec. 22 arrest, Wrigglesworth, who was at Fairhaven to ensure Gelinas was complying with his probation conditions, also found Gelinas in possession of two syringes — that he admitted were loaded with methamphetamine.

Gelinas was initially charged with two probation breaches and possession of a controlled substance, but the Crown accepted his plea to a single breach and stayed the other charges.

Crown counsel John Swanson noted Gelinas’s “lengthy history” of breaches and asked for a “step up” from the 15-day sentence he received for the previous one.

Defence counsel Norm Yates said his client was “living at a friend’s home and essentially couch-surfing” when he was nabbed at Fairhaven.

Gelinas, the lawyer explained, was in the room with other people, when the woman walked in and found her way to him.

“He was indeed sitting with her, but there were others in the room when police attended,” Yates noted.

Gelinas has lined up work for the next six months, his lawyer said, and successfully argued for his client to be permitted to serve his sentence on weekends so as not to interfere with his job.