A young man was sentenced to four months behind bars after the Yukon Court of Appeal deemed his initial sentence too light for a night of alcohol-fuelled ATV joy riding with friends that got out of hand.

The court upped the punishment for Petrus Lommerse, 22, who pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing bodily harm in 2012.

He was facing a $1,500 fine and 15-month driving prohibition, but will now spend four months in jail instead after the court granted the Crown's appeal.

In the early-morning hours of July 21, 2012, Lommerse was driving around the local community centre parking lot in the Marsh Lake area on an all-terrain vehicle with four friends. They were doing "burnouts” and

"doughnuts” and had been drinking, the ruling said.

Lommerse was driving the ATV — his mother's four-wheel Rhino cage buggy — "at considerable speed” as his friend, Dustin Kotylak, leaned out the passenger window.

Kotylak asked Lommerse to slow down, but they kept going full-tilt.

As Kotylak was hanging out the side, at around 1:15 a.m., Lommerse lost control of the ATV, which tipped onto two wheels and flipped, pinning Kotylak underneath.

His friends lifted the vehicle off him. Kotylak felt fine at first, he said, but was soon "in considerable pain,” the ruling stated.

He had suffered a broken rib and a punctured lower intestine.

He was hospitalized for six days, underwent surgery and fully recovered soon after.

Lommerse's blood-alcohol level registered at 0.15 in a breathalyzer test conducted later that morning.

RCMP officers extrapolated that at the time of the accident, the reading would likely have topped 0.16 — twice the legal limit for drivers.

All the men had been drinking.

Kotylak spoke in support of Lommerse at the sentencing hearing, noting that he visited him every day in hospital.

"Mr. Kotylak considers the accident to have been at least equally his own fault,” the ruling said.

But the appeals court wrote that the trial judge "understated the risks inherent in Mr. Lommerse's decision to drive while impaired, and consequently understated the level of moral culpability involved.”

Judge Harvey Groberman pointed out how unstable ATVs are at high speeds, and their minimal protection for occupants.

He also addressed the aim of Lommerse's joy ride from the outset, "which was intended to provide thrills for the vehicle occupants — and made impaired driving particularly risky.”

The judge also said individuals who are "normally law-abiding and have sympathetic backgrounds” should not get off lightly on those grounds: "It is just such individuals who must be deterred from impaired driving. For that reason, custodial sentences are the norm for impaired driving causing bodily harm.

"The sentence in this case — a moderate fine and a period of probation with limited conditions — is not a fit sentence,” Groberman said in the ruling.

The court imposed a four-month sentence in place of the fine and probation, but left the driving prohibition in place.

Lommerse's father, Ian, expressed anger and disillusionment with the sentence this week as he returned home from a one-hour visit with his son at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre.

"This court of appeal decision makes me puke .... I'm beginning to wonder why we have judges,” he said, referring to a reduction in judicial discretion inherent in recent federal minimum sentencing laws.

"I'm going to at least make an appointment with (Yukon MP Ryan) Leef to ask why these things seem to be so harsh,” Ian told the Star.

The initial sentence handed down by a trial judge last June was relatively light, the appeals court stated.

Impaired driving causing bodily harm carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

The trial judge based his sentence on several factors: Lommerse's youth, guilty plea, remorse, lack of criminal history and low risk of reoffending as well as a virtual absence of alcohol and drug problems and post-offence counselling through territorial alcohol and drug services staff.

The trial judge also pointed out that Lommerse joy rode in a parking lot in the early-morning hours rather than a school zone or on a highway at a busy time of day.

On top of the fine and driving prohibition, he handed Lommerse an 18-month probation period, with no alcohol consumption and a 10 p.m. curfew for the first four months.

The panel of appeal judges concluded this did not go far enough.