Custodial dad gets probation in gunshot death of 5-year-old son (Las Vegas, Nevada)

News accounts from 2009 reluctantly revealed that the father in question, ALEX KOPYSTENSKI, had custody of this child, not the mother. Now of course, that fact is being "disappeared" from the published accounts. This is typical. It is also typical that the father in question is getting off lightly, with only probation (!)--in the death of his 5-year-old son.

Had the single mother of an autistic kindergartner left loaded handguns laying around her car, she would have been roundly demonized as a mentally defective monster. But not this dad...

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Vegas-dad-gets-probation-in-son-s-gunshot-death-2139812.php

Vegas dad gets probation in son's gunshot death
Published 06:10 p.m., Wednesday, August 24, 2011

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas father was sentenced to five years' probation for neglecting his 5-year-old autistic son before the boy died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports (http://bit.ly/r5bs8P ) that Clark County District Court Judge Jessie Walsh on Wednesday also ordered Alex Kopystenski to stay away from weapons.

Kopystenski pleaded guilty in January to child abuse and neglect with substantial bodily harm.

Authorities say Giovanni Kopystenski used a loaded handgun to shoot himself in July 2009 in his father's car outside a Las Vegas pharmacy.

He was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Prosecutors sought jail time. But defense attorney Stephen Stein told the judge the 33-year-old father has deep feelings of guilt, started a foundation in his son's memory, and speaks publicly to prevent similar cases.