A Manitoba man who left his one-year-old daughter alone in a squalid inner-city apartment while he and his wife got drunk and high was sentenced Wednesday to six months in jail.

The 29-year-old man previously pleaded guilty to one count of failing to provide the necessities of life. The man cannot be named as it would identify his victim, one of six children he shares with his co-accused.

The man left his daughter alone "in what could only be described as a very sad state of affairs," said Judge Anne Krahn. "Parents have to take care, basic care, of children who have not chosen them as parents."

Krahn credited the man for time served, reducing his remaining sentence to 83 days. The Crown had been seeking a sentence as high as two years in jail.

"I believe an informed member of the public hearing the facts before the court would be horrified and would find this conduct horrendous, and deplorable as well as despicable," Crown attorney Alanna Littman said at a sentencing hearing earlier this month.

Court heard the accused and his wife and child checked into the Quest Inn, July 20 at 9 a.m., then promptly made their way to a an empty William Avenue apartment in a building identified as a gang house. There, the accused, his wife and another woman, starting drinking and snorting crushed Tylenol 3 pills, "rendering them extremely intoxicated," Littman said.

Over the course of the next 14 hours the couple repeatedly left the child alone in the sweltering apartment with no food or water or a change of clothes and only a dirty mattress to sleep on.

A neighbour heard the baby crying all day and eventually called police. Police arrived shortly before midnight and found the three adults "extremely intoxicated" and the child "laying on the floor in a feces-filled diaper," Littman said.

Child and Family Services seized the girl, who had scabs on both her knees and a foul-smelling discharge coming from her ear.

Defence lawyer John Corona emphasized the child was not physically harmed by his client.

"This is not a child that was beaten, this was a child that was neglected," Corona said.

The man has no prior criminal record and has been attending AA meetings since he was taken into custody, Corona said.

The child's mother remains before the court.

dean.pritchard@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @deanatwpgsun