WARMINGTON: Flamingo kidnapping a Vegas wager that could land Brampton man in a birdcage
· Toronto Sun
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What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but if you are convicted of harming a flamingo, that stay could be for four years longer than originally booked.
And that possible extended visit for Brampton’s Mitchell Fairbarn may not be in the comfortable Flamingo Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip but in a Nevada penitentiary.
That will be one interesting conversation when this GTA resident is asked to explain to his cellmate what he is in for. Kidnapping a flamingo bird named Peachy and taking it to his hotel room by the neck will be a new one for that prison.
You couldn’t write something so wild — even in the Hangover movies they used a tiger owned by Mike Tyson and a drug-dealing monkey who smoked cigarettes. Somebody call Bradley Cooper, Ken Jeong and Zach Galafanakis. Time for another Hollywood sequel.
It’s safe to say this is quite a Hangover for the 33-year-old, who was attending a construction convention, whose drunken gamble of drinking between “30 and 40 beers” and going into a wildlife reserve on March 3 has resulted in him losing big time in Sin City. In fact, Fairburn could go down as being the biggest Loser in Las Vegas history.
But it still would be in his interest to fall on his feathers, apologize to birds everywhere and tell his story as a cautionary tale of what not to do. It’s safe to say that while this prank had wings, it didn’t fly. On sober second thought, he does seem remorseful.
“I thought it was something that we could joke about for the rest of our lives,” KLAS 8 TV said Fairbarn told the court. “I thought it would be, at the time, funny.”
The 27-year-old Flamingo didn’t find it funny, nor does the justice system in Nevada.
But will there be any forgiveness?
‘It was fueled by drunkenness’
While most everybody who goes a little off in Vegas gets a second chance, maybe it would be wise to keep it to under 20 beers next time? In his closing argument, Fairbarn’s counsel Joshua Tomsheck said the whole thing was a result of drinking and not something meant to be malicious.
“If he was an evil guy and that was his design and his plan and if he wanted to kill Peachy, Peachy would be dead,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Tomsheck saying.
That defence didn’t fly with the jury, which found him guilty of a “felony and misdemeanour counts.”
As the Toronto Sun ’s Eddie Chau reported in July , police reported on the wounds to the bird’s feathers – some of which were seen on cell phone videos. Peachy was treated with antibiotics for the wounds, which included blood loss and losing eight feathers, but is now warning his pals to watch out for those drunken Canadians.
“What we’re saying is that it was dumb,” said Tomsheck.
To quote the Irish Rovers — “Could have been the whisky, might have been the gin, could have been three or four six packs, I don’t know, but look at the shape I’m in.”
After being found guilty of cruelty to an animal Monday in Clark County, it will be decided Dec. 1 just how much debt he will have to pay. As Casey Harrison of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, the district attorney is asking for four-and-a-half years in the slammer.
And maybe a condition to not be within 100 metres of flamingos or any bird, for that matter.
“It was fueled by drunkenness,” said Tomsheck.
The result is that Fairbarn won’t be leaving Las Vegas anytime soon. He is under house arrest now but soon could find himself in housing the size of a birdcage.