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This article was published 3/1/2017 (1352 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Charleswood man who confronted his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend after seeing them together in a Snapchat post has been banned from using personal social media sites for a year.

Leonard Adam Colby Floyde, 24, pleaded guilty to forcible entry and assault causing bodily harm Tuesday, admitting he attacked his former girlfriend’s new boyfriend after tracking them down at her family cabin last summer.

Floyde and his girlfriend of nearly five years had broken up a couple of months earlier, but he believed they were still working things out when he saw a post from her on the photo/video mobile app in July that sent him into a rage. He asked a mutual friend if his ex-girlfriend had invited another man to her family's cabin on Lake Winnipeg, and, his fears confirmed, planned to confront the couple at a nearby bar. He didn’t see them at the bar, so he made his way to the cabin after drinking a 40-ounce bottle of vodka. He slipped in through an unlocked door, went into the bedroom and started punching the new boyfriend as he slept, leaving him with facial cuts that needed stitches and chipped teeth, court heard.

Crown and defence lawyers recommended Floyde serve a one-year conditional sentence order, binding him by several conditions including a nightly curfew, which he must follow to avoid jail time. But provincial court Judge Brent Stewart went a step further, ordering Floyde not to log on to social media except for business purposes. The judge showed no sympathy for Floyde, a 285-pound self-employed former football player with no prior criminal record, and demanded he explain himself.

"Two-hundred-eighty-five pounds, pounding on a sleeping man. What’s it all about?" Stewart asked.

"It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life and I regret every minute of it and if I could take it back, I would," he said, before the judge continued.

"Do you think you own her? Is that what you’re thinking?"

"Not at all, sir," Floyde said, saying he made a "horrible judgment call" while intoxicated. In response to the judge’s suggestion that he receive counselling for his "attitude toward women and their independence from their so-called ex-boyfriends," Floyde said he is in therapy to deal with anger-management issues.

"He certainly regrets not only the damage that he caused, but his own lack of impulse control and his own lack of ability to control his emotions in the circumstances," defence lawyer Gerri Wiebe said.

The judge ultimately agreed putting Floyde in jail would do more harm than good in this case, but he imparted a strong warning: "If you ever come back again, you’ll be gone for some long period of time," he said.

"You step out of line, you just simply go to jail."

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay