A Sweetgrass First Nation man is serving two-and-a-half years for criminal harassment of a witness — his girlfriend.
Austin Kenneth Paskemin pleaded guilty last week to two counts.
One charge was for trying to persuade his girlfriend to lie to police and the courts or avoid testifying; the second one was for threatening to harm his girlfriend and her grandparents.
Court was told that between July 27th of last year and April 10th of this year, Paskemin phoned and wrote 27 letters to his girlfriend trying to persuade her to change her story or not to testify.
It all relates to an incident in which Paskemin’s girlfriend was stabbed in the back with a pocket knife, and stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver.
The jail term goes on top of any other sentence Paskemin may be serving.