'This isn't your first rodeo': Judge lets repeat drunk driver serve time on weekends

A local man caught a break Friday when a judge said yes to his request to serve his time for a drinking and driving offence on weekends.

Charles Syrette pleaded guilty in July to an over 80 charge that occurred a year earlier.

He was charged on July, 31, 2022, after officers with the Sault Ste. Marie detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police responded to a complaint about a possible impaired driver.

The vehicle was travelling on Highway 17B from the Echo Bay area.

Officers with the Batchewana First Nation police service spotted the vehicle on the highway, heading westbound near Belleau Lake Road, and stopped it in Garden River First Nation.

Syrette, 39, told Ontario Court Justice John Condon he had just started a new job and asked for an intermittent sentence.

The judge put the matter over so the accused could provide the court with his work schedule.

The Batchewana First Nation man returned to the Sault Ste. Marie courthouse Friday with documentation from his employer indicating he works Monday to Friday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Condon imposed a 30-day sentence that requires him to report to the Algoma Treatment and Remand Centre on Fridays at 8 p.m.

He will be released from custody at 7 p.m. on Sundays.

While serving the sentence Syrette will be on probation and must be sober when he reports to the custodial institution.

"This isn't your first rodeo for drinking and driving," the judge told him.

"Let it be your last," Condon said, urging him not to come back to court.