Child screamed as man bashed mom’s vehicle

Kevin Roy Grunerud has earned two years in a federal penitentiary for a number of assaults against his ex-partner and her four-year-old son.

Kevin Roy Grunerud has earned two years in a federal penitentiary for a number of assaults against his ex-partner and her four-year-old son.

Earlier this year, the Yukoner, who lives and works between Whitehorse and Dawson City, was found guilty of seven charges. They included breaking and entering, mischief, assault, assault with a weapon and uttering death threats. The charges stemmed from two incidents involving Grunerud’s girlfriend.

The first occurred in March of 2007, when Grunerud took a sledgehammer to the front door of the woman’s mobile home after she locked him out and blocked the door with two kitchen chairs.

Grunerud and she had recently agreed to separate and he had come to the house to pick up his belongings, which she had left on the front porch.

She told the court she refused to let him in because it was clear he had been drinking, a condition she said had led to violent altercations in the past.

Once he got into the house, the court heard, he knocked over the television and DVD stand.

He then pulled a butcher’s knife from the kitchen drawer and came towards her, as she described, with the knife held over his head “in a stabbing motion.”

Earlier that evening, the woman had made a plan with a friend of hers, wherein the woman would call, let the phone ring once, then hang up if she were in trouble. If, when the friend called back, there was no answer, she was to call the police.

The phone rang and Grunerud used the sledgehammer to smash the cell phone, which was lying on the ground.

The friend immediately called the cops.

He hit the phone so hard, he busted a hole right through the floor of the trailer. By that time, the woman said, she had locked herself in the bathroom.

Grunerud smashed down the bathroom door with the sledgehammer.

An RCMP officer arrived just as he was entering the bathroom, sledgehammer held over his head, threatening to strike. Grunerud quickly moved into the bedroom, stashed his weapon under the bed and sat down as if nothing had happened.

He denied his ex’s version of events, but her story was backed up by photos and evidence collected by the officer.

Grunerud was arrested and stayed in custody until the fall.

When he was released, the two resumed their relationship, in spite of the fact the court had ordered Grunerud not to contact his girlfriend.

She told the court she desperately wanted the union to work.

“I thought I could handle it,” she said, adding she wanted to get married and build a home together. Grunerud was a caring and kind partner, she said, as long as he stayed sober.

But on Nov. 14, 2007, he was drunk again. The woman returned home that evening to find Grunerud in the front lobby of her new apartment. He had with him a bag of beer cans and smelled of alcohol.

She and her young son, along with their new puppy, went into their home and Grunerud followed. She asked him to leave and he refused.

“Fine,” she said, “you stay here and we’ll leave.”

She went into the bedroom with the boy and began to pack an overnight bag. Grunerud came after her, and when she turned to face him, he slapped her.

“Don’t do this,” she pleaded, and he punched with a closed fist.

The child, who both Grunerud and the woman say looked up to the man as a father, was sobbing.

“Cowboy up,” he told the boy, then proceeded to kick the child’s mother where she lay on the ground.

He got in two kicks before the woman was able to get up. She grabbed her child and the puppy and escaped. She got everyone into the truck and was pulling out of the garage when Grunerud appeared again, this time in his own truck.

He slammed his vehicle into hers before she managed to slip by him onto the street, but Grunerud wasn’t giving up.

He followed her down the road, rear-ending her several times, doing significant damage to both trucks.

The whole time the child was screaming, “Daddy, don’t!”

Finally, she pulled into a gas station. Grunerud pulled up in front of her, gave her the finger and sped off.

An RCMP officer shortly replied to the woman’s 911 call, which she had made while driving, and found both mother and child shaken and crying.

It wasn’t until that time that the woman began to tell the whole story of what had happened over the previous year. The tale came out bit by bit over the course of the police investigation.

The Crown, on the RCMP’s recommendation, charged Grunerud for assaulting his partner and her son with a vehicle.

More details were revealed during the trial, and the woman admitted she omitted parts of the story when she told it to police.

Grunerud tried to use that in his defence, saying she continually lied to police and the court. But Justice Leigh Gower, who heard the case and ultimately sentenced the offender, found otherwise.

It is common in cases of spousal abuse, he said, for the victim to try to protect her attacker. Often, victims of domestic assault feel ashamed and responsible for what has happened to them, and they hold out a faint hope that the relationship could work, if only things would change.

This woman is no different, the judge said. She obviously cared for Grunerud and saw in him a good husband and father. But when his violence began to involve her son, she had had enough.

Although Grunerud denied many of the allegations against him during the course of the investigation and trial, once he was found guilty, he changed his tune.

At a pre-sentencing hearing on Wednesday, Grunerud told the court he takes full responsibility for what he did, and admitted he has a “severe problem with alcohol.”

His actions, he said, were “inexcusable, to say the least.”

He vowed to take anger-management counselling and to attend Alcoholics Anonymous.

Grunerud’s lawyer suggested a conditional sentence of two years less a day, to be served in the community, rather than in jail.

Gower rejected that submission, saying that Grunerud’s previous record, the dire results of his spousal assault tests and his alcoholism “would combine to make him a great risk to public safety.”

Instead, the judge took the Crown’s advice and sentenced the man to 45 months, to be served in a federal penitentiary.

Grunerud has been in custody for some 15 months. Gower gave him credit for 21 months, leaving Grunerud to serve two years in prison.

“I see in you a man of possibilities, strengths and talents,” the judge said after sentencing, “but I don’t want you to slip back into drinking, anger and violence.”

He recommended that Grunerud take full advantage of the anger management and alcohol counselling available in prison.

“It will be hard work,” Gower said. “Good luck.”