A Summerland man who chased after an Amazon delivery driver and then his own neighbours with a machete will spend another 109 days in jail.
After being found guilty at trial earlier in 2025, Joshuah Samuel Butler, 39, appeared in Penticton Provincial Court via video from the Okanagan Correctional Centre (OCC) on July 7 for sentencing on the charges of assault with a weapon, uttering threats to cause bodily harm or death and dangerous operation of a vehicle.
The details of what led to those charges were only briefly touched on by the Crown and Judge Lynette Jung during the sentencing.
In the summary shared during Jung's reasons for her sentence, Butler had chased after his neighbours with a machete while uttering words like "Die, die, die," before getting into a vehicle and recklessly chasing after his mother's vehicle down the street.
Butler denied those circumstances, denied running his mother off the road, and claimed that he had simply been approaching an overgrown trail behind the house to try out the newly sharpened machete and had chased after his mother because he had left his wallet and phone in the car.
The neighbours both submitted victim impact statements expressing their ongoing fears and the trauma they suffered, after they had been going about their day-to-day life checking on their garden and looking for an Amazon package that had gone to the wrong door.
"She said, 'I don't understand why he chased the Amazon driver that dropped off our order down the street, to pick up a machete and come to our property,'" Crown stated, sharing a portion of one of the statements. "'Why, why did the usual gentle afternoon after work turn into a nightmare, a true nightmare, a nightmare I still have.'"
After being arrested for his crimes on Sept. 24, 2024, Butler spent the next 287 days in custody at OCC, and as a result, his lawyer sought to have him receive a sentence of time served.
The Crown instead sought to have another 109 days added on, for a total sentence of 18 months including the credit for time already served.
Judge Jung sided with the Crown, citing how the victims were threatened on their own property, in a place where they should feel safe and secure.
"These are serious offences," Judge Jung said. "The driving that was described by the three witnesses was absolutely objectively dangerous and terrifying. The behaviour was bizarre and concerning, and I ordered the psychiatric assessment because I was really concerned about Mr. Butler's future and whether there can be some resources opened up to Mr. Butler so that he can get healthy, stay healthy, and reduce the risk of recidivism and in particular violent recidivism."
The psychiatric report that was prepared found that while Butler did not rise to an official diagnosis of a mental condition, there was evidence that supported the finding that he has a form of anti-social personality disorder with significant narcissistic traits.
In addition to the 109 days in jail, Butler was also sentenced to spend two years on probation after release, to have no contact with any of the victims, not to possess any weapons including any knives, and not to go within 500 metres of Butler Street except when passing through that radius in a vehicle on his way to another location.
Due to Butler having just been laid off at the time of the offences, been in jail ever since, and received his further sentence, Judge Jung waived the victim crime surcharge while noting that she did not make that decision lightly, as it funds support for people like Butler's victims.
