News - Stories and Rants
Friday 31 October 2014
Biggest Panhandler the City of Fredericton Mike Gaudet calls Blogger - Bottom Feeder!!!
The Biggest Panhandler in the City calls me a Bottom Feeder??? I don't make it a practice of posting Irving stories in this Blog but it's all about me me me....:P
Bottom Feeder??? Moi????
Sentencing goes south when defendant blames complainants
DON MACPHERSON THE DAILY GLEANER
A Fredericton man who pleaded guilty to assaulting two men in the city’s downtown area on two different occasions told a court on Wednesday he was the victim, not them.
Michael Joseph Gaudet, 57, of no fixed address was before provincial court Judge Julian Dickson on Wednesday to be sentenced for two counts of assault.
The panhandler previously pleaded guilty to summary counts of assault, alleging a May 9 attack on activist and blogger Charles LeBlanc and a May 18 incident involving another panhandler.
But after the prosecutor relayed the Crown’s alleged facts to the court, Gaudet disputed them and alleged the other men were the aggressors.
That led Dickson to strike his guilty pleas and refer the matter to another judge to set a date for trials.
Crown prosecutor Rodney Jordan said LeBlanc reported to police he was interviewing a Fredericton resident on King Street by the Tannery over the lunch hour on May 9 when Gaudet approached, spat on him and initiated a physical altercation.
LeBlanc said Gaudet punched him in the head five or six times, and when police spoke with him, his eye was swollen.
The blogger also told police the initial moments of the confrontation were caught on video, as he had been recording his conversation with the other man at the time.
“That’s a totally fabricated story ... Mr. LeBlanc is a bottom-feeder,” Gaudet said.
“I actually spit in disgust and the wind took it and it hit his arm.”
Gaudet, who’s being held in custody on other matters, told the court LeBlanc had a beef with him over a previous dispute about how the blogger had handled a charitable collection effort. As a result of that dispute, he claimed, Le-Blanc had it in for him.
“He started to provoke a situation ... Charles hates me. He hates me,” Gaudet said.
“Charles psyched me out... Punched me out that day.”
The YouTube video of the moments before the physical altercation shows a different story. While Gaudet claimed LeBlanc provoked him through words, the video shows LeBlanc speaking with his interview subject and not exchanging any words with Gaudet.
The video depicts Gaudet crossing the street, making a beeline for LeBlanc, and one can hear him spit in the recording when he’s apparently standing quite close to the complainant.
That video wasn’t viewed by the court on Wednesday.
As for a May 18 incident, Jordan said the male complainant in that case was having a coffee and a cigarette just outside the door of the Tim Hortons on King Street shortly after 7 a.m.
Gaudet came along at about 7:10 a.m. and started calling the man names and then attacked him, the prosecutor said, punching and kicking him without provocation, according to independent witnesses on the scene.
But Gaudet said it was a dispute over panhandling territory.
“This was all over a spot ... I got a spot that I go to every morning (to panhandle), and he wants it,”the defendant said, noting everyone in Fredericton knows the sidewalk in front of that Tom Hortons has been his spot for years.
“(The complainant) was there to beat me up ... (He) is in cahoots with the new people who are running Tim Hortons.”
Gaudet said he allowed the other panhandle to beg in his spot for a few minutes , but then he wouldn’t give it up.
He said the complainant provoked him by threatening to stab him, which he claimed people know is a trigger for Gaudet as he was stabbed out West years ago.
“I just can’t control it. I’m going to defend myself immediately,” Gaudet said, claiming he punched the man once with a closed fist and that was it.
But witnesses at the scene reported much more violence than that, Jordan had told the court.
Dickson said he felt he had no choice but to strike Gaudet’s not-guilty pleas and set the matter over to another court to schedule them for trial.
He adjourned the matters to Nov. 5 in the other provincial court in Fredericton.
Gaudet was also in court Wednesday to be sentenced for two trespass infractions, and he admitted to those offences.
Dickson fined him a total of $480, to be paid immediately or Gaudet would have to serve time in jail in default.
Gaudet is also awaiting trial on unrelated matters: Aug. 12 counts of robbing employees of the Shoppers Drug Mart on Regent Street of a quantity of painkillers and breaching a judicial undertaking. The trial on those charges is scheduled for Nov. 24.
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