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Homeless, disabled man jailed in bird death. Are we crazy?
By Kelly egan, OTTAWA CITIZEN April 10, 2014 7:27 PM
OTTAWA — On March 27, a man named Keith Watt was jailed for five days for fatally injuring a seagull in the ByWard Market.
A shocking little story with two gaping holes: Who is he? Who are we to jail this man, for that?
So we found him. Watt is 58, homeless, and usually moves along in a wheelchair. His memory is not good, his health poor.
He lives at the Shepherds of Good Hope and needs daily help, which he gets in the Enhanced Support Program on the second floor. He has been here a year, but in shelters, overall, years longer.
He sleeps in a dorm with four sets of steel bunk beds and keeps his possessions in a locker. Thursday found him clean shaven, wearing a ball cap that said Antihero. His fingers were nicotine-stained and his boots had seen better days.
“I thought it was a kangaroo court, man,” he said, in describing the trial in provincial offences court. “I couldn’t believe it. These people are off the wall.”
Watt said he thought he was showing up on Constellation Drive for a remand or new date. Next thing he knows, the trial is on and he’s representing himself. “There was no way I was pleading guilty.”
He says he had fallen into the habit of feeding pigeons almost every day on George Street, near a restaurant called the Honest Lawyer, which is adjacent to a parking lot. He likes pigeons; his father used to keep them on the farm, he said.
That day in August, he was in his wheelchair, pulling out pieces of stale bread that he scrounged from the Shepherds kitchen. “The pigeons were all over me,” he said. “All over my arms and shoulders.”
Out of nowhere, what he calls a “silver” bird came swooping onto his right hand and bit him on the finger. “I went like this,” he said, spreading his arms apart. He said the motion of his flailing arm threw the gull against a brick wall, whereupon it fell to the ground, hurt or stunned.
Watt says the bird was very much alive, so he picked it up and put it on the other side of the wall. “I didn’t want some dog to grab it.”
Watt’s version of events differs from what a witness described, according to the humane society. The witness said Watt grabbed the bird to begin with, bashed it repeatedly after it bit him, then discarded it, apparently believing it was dead.
The bird was taken to the Wild Bird Care Centre, where it died two days later.
Watt said it was some weeks later he was served with a written notice of the offence: causing distress to an animal. Not only was he given a five-day jail term, but he was placed on probation for two years, banned from owning animals for five and ordered to pay about $800 in restitution.
$800? From a man without eight bucks.
The Ottawa Humane Society, meanwhile, sent out a news release declaring itself pleased with the sentence and calling jail time the “right” punishment.
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