A Kiwi man living in the US has been told to leave the country after an incident involving a 12-year-old child who \u201cdoorbell ditched\u201d his Utah home in August last year. <\/p>\n
Tony Arnold Bernstone, 59, pleaded guilty this month to a reduced charge of child kidnapping and was sentenced to five days’ jail time and four years’ probation over the incident. <\/p>\n
Court documents said a group of children at a sleepover “ding-dong ditched” a number of homes on August 2, 2025, including Bernstone’s Salt Lake City property. <\/p>\n
The common doorbell prank involves ringing a doorbell and running away before the occupant answers.<\/p>\n
Bernstone was accused of pursuing the boys on a bicycle before grabbing one boy by the shirt, striking him several times in the face and punching him in the stomach. <\/p>\n
Witnesses at the scene reportedly heard Bernstone telling the juveniles he was going to \u201cbeat the s*** out of them”. <\/p>\n
Bernstone then reportedly forced the 12-year-old boy to walk with him. The boy contacted his father, who arranged to meet Bernstone at a nearby service station, where police were called.<\/p>\n
Officers said Bernstone initially admitted to pushing the child against a fence and slapping him across the mouth while trying to stop him running away.<\/p>\n
He was arrested in August following the incident and later admitted to the reduced child kidnapping charge. <\/p>\n
The judge ordered Bernstone to self-deport to New Zealand and not return to Utah during his four-year probation period. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Kiwi man living in the US has been told to leave the country after an incident involving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-404226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}