Convicted of assaulting his girlfriend with a wooden coffee table and threatening to kill her puppies, Grant Tapper almost immediately turned to his lawyer.
“We’re going to appeal this right?” he asked as sheriff’s officers were putting handcuffs on his wrists, preparing to escort him back to the holding cells at provincial court in St. John’s.
Judge Mike Madden found Tapper, 33, guilty of assault with a weapon, uttering threats to harm an animal and breaching a court order in connection with the incident, which happened last spring. Madden acquitted Tapper on a charge of common assault due to a lack of evidence.
“There was no evidence of bodily harm but there was certainly a use of force since the table was broken,” Madden noted. He accepted the testimony of the victim’s ex-husband, who said he had seen Tapper pick up the oak coffee table and use it to strike the woman.
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Madden sentenced Tapper to nine months behind bars – six months for the assault with the table and 45 days each for threats and breaching orders — and gave him credit at a rate of 1.5 to one for the time he has spent in custody waiting for his trial. That means Tapper has roughly three more months to serve in jail.
Tapper is also banned from having any contact with the woman or her ex-husband, and must undergo counselling as deemed necessary by his probation officer, particularly when it comes to domestic violence, alcohol, and anger management.
The court heard Tapper and his then-girlfriend had begun arguing outside a pool hall early in the evening of March 13, after the woman became upset over Tapper using her money to buy a drink for someone else. Later, at the couple’s apartment, the woman said Tapper had grown violent after she tried to get him to leave. She said he choked, struck, kicked, slapped, threw and pushed her, as well as spat on her.
She said Tapper went into the spare room, where she had five 11-week-old Rottweiler puppies and their mother, and grabbed one of the puppies by the neck, making a twisting motion on the dog’s body and threatening to kill it.
The woman’s ex-husband, whom she said had helped her escape from the apartment and get to a neighbour’s house, from where she called police, testified he witnessed the violence and saw Tapper run the bath, believing he was going to drown the puppies.
Police officers testified that Tapper spoke to them through an apartment window when they arrived, and one officer told the court Tapper had asked him, “How long will I spend in jail for drowning puppies?” Later, Tapper told him, “Do you actually think I would kill puppies?”
Crown prosecutor Robin Singleton had argued for a jail sentence of between 10 and 12 months for Tapper, pointing to his extensive criminal record, which includes four convictions from last November related to other assaults on the same woman (and orders to participate in domestic violence and anger management counseling). The coffee table was heavy, Singleton said, and Tapper had become angry and violent “over something foolish.” The threats to harm the puppies were an attempt at manipulating the woman, Singleton said.
Tapper’s lawyer, Michael Ralph, acknowledged the criminal record, but argued there was no evidence the woman had been severely physically harmed by the assault with the coffee table.
When Madden asked Tapper directly if there was anything he’d like to say to the court, his reply was brief.
“I’d just like to thank-you for your time on this matter.”
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Twitter: @tara_bradbury
