A Saskatoon man who smashed a beer glass into another man’s face at a Broadway Avenue pub a year ago avoided a jail sentence Thursday in provincial court.
Mark Richard MacLaurin, 26, received a suspended sentence with two years of probation for aggravated assault against Matthew Fawcett, who suffered cuts and nerve damage in the drunken incident.
"I just want to take this chance to apologize . . . and just say I’m very sorry for the injuries I caused. I don’t believe he ever deserved them and I don’t believe I ever intended to cause them," MacLaurin told Judge Daryl Labach before the sentence was imposed.
MacLaurin took a swing with the glass in his hand after Fawcett pushed him in the chest — a physical confrontation that followed several hours of drunken hostility between MacLaurin and a group of people that included Fawcett and his brother, Ben Fawcett, witnesses testified at MacLaurin’s recent trial.
The conflict started when MacLaurin made an insulting remark about a pair of suspenders Ben Fawcett was wearing that night, court heard.
Words were exchanged a few times over the ensuing hours, with MacLaurin refusing the brothers’ demands for an apology and ignoring their invitations to go outside for a fight.
When Ben Fawcett’s girlfriend made aneffort to negotiate a truce between them, MacLaurin agreed to shake hands — but Matthew Fawcett refused, delivering the shove instead, Labach noted Thursday.
MacLaurin’s reaction to the shove was "excessive and inappropriate," but the whole incident would likely have been avoided if the Fawcetts had simply ignored his insult when they first encountered him, rather than goading him as the night wore on, Labach said. "It appears to have been a momentary lapse in judgment by the accused. . . . Had the complainant not pushed the accused, this might not have even happened."
Fawcett needed 32 stitches and plastic surgery for deep cuts to the left side of his face and made repeated hospital trips to have embedded glass shards removed from his wounds following the assault. The glass severed one of his salivary glands and he may require more plastic surgery to deal with visible scars.
MacLaurin’s criminal record had only one previous entry at the time of the incident — a drunk driving conviction in 2007.
After police charged him with the aggravated assault againt Fawcett, he was released on bail, then subsequently convicted of breaching his bail conditions by failing to obey a curfew on two occasions in January and February 2010. He served a total of 10 days in custody for the breaches.
Labach ordered MacLaurin to follow a nightly curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the first year of his probation.
He also ordered him to abstain from alcohol and illegal drugs, take assessment and counselling for addictions, avoid bars and liquor stores, serve 100 hours of community service and pay a $1,000 victim surcharge.
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