A 39-year-old man who last July broke into the west-side Kingston home of his former partner and the new man in her life, waited for the pair to arrive home shortly after midnight, and then appeared in their bedroom with a baseball bat and attacked, has been sentenced to three years and 220 days in prison.

Michael J. Cupido pleaded guilty in early December to breaking and entering, an aggravated assault on his male victim, assaulting his former partner, and possessing a weapon — the bat — for a dangerous purpose.

His sentencing was put over to this week so that a pre-sentence report could be prepared, and he was initially scheduled for a two-hour sentencing hearing on Monday. Immediately before that process was set to begin, however, Cupido’s lawyer, Mark Snider, told Justice Alison Wheeler that he and his prosecution counterpart had reached a resolution. Snider and assistant Crown attorney Janet O’Brien then made a joint recommendation for a four-and-a-half-year penitentiary sentence, minus the 218 days Cupido had already spent in pretrial custody, which, once the standard enhancement was applied, was deemed equivalent to 327 days of his sentence already served.

Cupido, from the prisoner’s dock, told the judge, “We are here today because of my terrible actions on July 8, 2018. It’s a day I wish I could take back.”

In December, when Cupido entered his pleas, Justice Wheeler was told the victims were preparing for bed when they heard a noise they at first thought was an animal outside. Minutes later, however, Cupido suddenly appeared in their bedroom holding a baseball bat and began swinging at the man he viewed as his rival.

Assistant Crown attorney Greg Skerkowski, who was the original prosecutor on the case, told the judge in December that Cupido was unhappy about his relationship being over and he’d been trying to convince his ex to come back to him.

Justice Wheeler, in sentencing Cupido, alluded to three phone calls the woman had made to police prior to that night, complaining about his persistence.

That Wednesday, however, Cupido tried a chilling new tactic, swinging the baseball bat he’d brought with him at the head of his replacement.

Skerkowski told the judge the target of Cupido’s attack took several whacks in the face and shoulder before he was able to grapple his assailant out of the bedroom and down the stairs, where the victim ended up on the floor, on his knees, having his genitals pulled and twisted by Cupido, before he turned his attention to the woman.

At that point, according to Skerkowski, Cupido’s rival moved to protect his partner and somehow got the bat away from their assailant and struck him with it, driving him off. The couple then called police and the male victim was removed from the house by ambulance and taken to hospital, where he was found to have a broken toe, multiple bumps on his head from being struck by the bat, a cut on one finger inflicted when Cupido bit him, and swelling and discoloration to his genitals. The woman had sustained bruises to her arms and torso.

At his sentencing, O’Brien told the judge it was significant that “this was a home invasion.” Cupido broke into the couple’s home, she said, and “waited until they were at their most vulnerable, getting ready for bed.”

It was also premeditated, the Crown prosecutor noted, the evidence being that Cupido brought the bat with him. She observed, as well, that he directed his blows at his male victim’s head, intending to maximize the damage he inflicted.

The fact that those injuries were not more severe, she suggested, wasn’t due to any restraint on Cupido’s part.

The impact statements of the victims also spoke of how the violence of that night continues to resonate through their lives seven months later.

The woman told the judge she didn’t immediately realize the identity of the intruder and described “the sheer horror of someone standing in front of the doorway to your bedroom, not knowing who it was or what they wanted.”

She also spoke of how recognition did nothing to diminish that horror once Cupido’s intentions became clear.

Speaking directly to him, she told Cupido, “You turned my whole world upside down.”

That night, she said, deprived her entirely of her sense of security.

“We tried everything to make things easier,” she told Justice Wheeler. “We moved around the furniture. We put a lock on our bedroom door.”

Eventually, however, she and her partner had to sell their house because they just couldn’t feel safe there.

Even now, however, “I can’t stand to be alone in the house,” she told the judge, and moving hasn’t brought the calm that would allow her to sleep peacefully through the night.

She told the judge she got a new job but wasn’t able to make it through the first day, and she told Cupido, “You turned two people who deeply loved each other into strangers. You have made us question a relationship we were so sure of.”

That night, the young children she and Cupido share were sleeping over at his home, and she recalled her immediate fear that he might have done something to them before coming after her and her current partner. He hadn’t, but she told him, “That night they lost you and you didn’t even say goodbye.”

They also lost an older brother they love deeply, she said, and a set of grandparents.

“Unfortunately,” she told the judge, “what this has shown me is I will always have to be afraid for my family.”

Her partner’s victim impact statement was read into the record by Crown prosecutor O’Brien. In it, he describes how he went from being someone who loved his job and looked forward to going to work and meeting new people to being someone who has a hard time getting out of bed most mornings. He now questions his ability to protect his family and writes, “Dealing with this while you are still locked up, I can’t even image what the anxiety will be like once you are released.”

In his impact statement, he reveals that he dreads some day bumping into Cupido in a store or seeing him on the drive home.

Justice Wheeler, in sentencing Cupido, said, “It’s impossible to overstate the impact of what went on here. It is the stuff of nightmares.” She also said his ex “suffers from a misplaced sense of guilt,” and told both victims “this was in no way, shape or form your fault.”

syanagisawa@postmedia.com