A man who entered an unlocked front door at a house near Eaglenest Park and and was found taking off his shoes will spend the next 12 months on probation.
Brennan Mitchell Bredo, 29, pleaded guilty to mischief before Provincial Court Judge David Simpkin on Aug. 25 in Prince George and received a suspended sentence.
The probation includes an order to stay away from the house and the father and son who found Bredo on Oct. 4, 2024 before 4 p.m.
Images from a doorbell camera video of Bredo were circulated at the RCMP detachment. He was arrested after a security guard at University Hospital of Northern B.C. hospital recognized Bredo in the hospital two days later.
Court heard that, during the 20-to-30-second incident, Bredo told the residents that he believed he was at a friend’s house to collect a package.
Simpkin said that Bredo was “in the throes of his addiction at the time,” but he caused considerable shock to the residents and required denunciation and deterrence.
Defence lawyer Connor Carleton said the video shows Bredo intoxicated and he was clearly mistaken. “He wasn’t malicious or aggressive or anything,” Carleton said.
Bredo is a welder by trade but has been living in a recovery facility in Alberta after he suffered a fentanyl and benzodiazepine overdose in April that left him hospitalized and on a ventilator for almost a month.
Simpkin acknowledged Bredo’s prior criminal sentence in 2019 of one-year probation and a one-year driving ban for impaired driving. If not for that, Simpkin said he would have considered a discharge.
“Mr. Bredo has taken some remarkable steps since that incident, and perhaps motivated by a near-death experience when he overdosed on opiates,” Simpkin said.
