A man has been jailed for punching an eight-year-old boy before threatening to use his baby son as a human shield at a school in regional Western Australia.<\/p>\n
Details of the June 2024 confrontation came to light during the 49-year-old’s sentencing hearing in Albany Magistrates Court on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The ABC has chosen not to identify the school or town to protect the children involved.<\/p>\n
The court heard that the man, who had his son with him in a pram, was standing outside the school grounds and yelling abuse at staff and students.<\/p>\n
The eight-year-old boy approached the man, objecting to the abusive language he had been yelling at his brother.<\/p>\n
The man then punched the boy in the arm and left the scene, leaving the baby behind.<\/p>\n
The court was told school staff called police and cared for the child until the man returned to the scene about 10 minutes later.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The man swung his child from side to side and hung him upside down in a bid to prevent police from tasering him. (ABC News: Lucas Hill)<\/p>\n
The man threatened to attack the officers, who told him they would use a taser against him.<\/p>\n
“If that’s what you do, I”ll put my child in front of me \u2014 that’s my shield,” the man said.<\/p>\n
He then began swinging the child from side to side and holding him upside down above the ground.<\/p>\n
Police secured the child before using the taser to subdue the man.<\/p>\n
He was sentenced to 12 months behind bars.<\/p>\n
Mental condition a key factor, defence says<\/p>\n
The man pleaded guilty to the charges of common assault and endangering the life, health or safety of a person.<\/p>\n
If you or anyone you know needs help:Suicide Call Back Service<\/a> on 1300 659 467Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN<\/a>\u00a0on 13 92 76Kids Helpline<\/a> on 1800 551 800Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 224 636Headspace<\/a> on 1800 650 890ReachOut<\/a> at au.reachout.com<\/a>MensLine Australia<\/a> on 1300 789 978QLife 1800 184 527<\/a><\/p>\n His lawyer told the court he has schizophrenia and was not on medication at the time.<\/p>\n Police prosecutor Dylan Fisher said the incident could have a lasting impact on the child and others who witnessed it.<\/p>\n “Parents have the right to believe their kids are safe in schools,” he said.<\/p>\n Magistrate Erin O’Donnell said it was a very serious and confronting incident.<\/p>\n The man was given an additional six-month sentence for a domestic violence related assault charge and for breaching a police order, relating to an incident a day earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been jailed for punching an eight-year-old boy before threatening to use his baby son as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101875,101879,101878,29946,43,101880,101876,44,41,39,42,40,101877],"class_list":["post-151918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-albany-crime-news","tag-albany-magistrates-court","tag-great-southern-crime-news","tag-great-southern-news","tag-headlines","tag-human-shield","tag-man-jailed-for-punching-boy","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wa-school-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}