A man left a baby home alone in the middle of the night when he stormed out in a drunken fury.
Lee Fleming, 35, had been babysitting for the one-year-old’s mum in central Billingham while she was at a funeral.
But when she failed to return he texted her at 2.15am saying that he had left the boy alone in the house.
Prosecutor Harry Hadfield told Teesside Crown Court that 30 minutes later Fleming called the police telling them what he had done.
When the mother got home at 2.50am on September 27 she found the tot in his cot and Fleming had also smashed up her bedroom wrecking a TV and damaging some of her clothes.
The police found six empty cans of cider in the wheelie bin, and when they tracked him down to his sister’s home in Stockton that afternoon she said that he had arrived there at 2.45am.
Police arrested the father of two, and the baby’s mother was so upset that she had to be consoled by officers.
The woman said that she was not comfortable in her own house since the incident.
Fleming said in interview that he had drunk seven cans of cider and he was so angry when the mother had not returned despite his text messages that he went into her bedroom and he smashed her TV
Mr Hadfield said that Fleming had previous convictions for harassment and breach of restraining orders in 2000.
Amy Dixon, defending, said that at the time of the offences he had agreed to look after the baby.
She added: “He was becoming paranoid about what she was up to when she was out.
“He got into an emotional state and he drank alcohol. He estimates that the time that the boy was left alone was about 30 minutes.
“He rang the police twice and he was arrested at about 3PM.”
The judge told Fleming that he had been criminal in abandoning the baby.
Recorder Tim Gittins QC said: “You lost patience with her [the mother], causing damage to various items of her property in a demonstration of frustration and selfishness, and by the early hours of the morning you decided that you had had enough.
“I acknowledge that very shortly thereafter on realising that she was not taking seriously your threats to leave you took steps to contact the police, but you left a 22 month old child alone.”
Fleming, of Clarendon Road, Stockton, was given a three months jail sentence suspended for 18 months with supervision and a programme Building Better Relationships after he pleaded guilty to abandoning the baby.
He was also given a restraining order banning him indefinitely from contacting the mother, who cannot be named after the judge made an ordering prohibiting identification of the child, or from entering the road where she lives risking a maximum penalty of five years jail.
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