Toronto 'Chair Girl' who hurled chair from balcony onto busy road spared jail

A woman who hurled a chair off a high-rise balcony onto a busy highway has been spared jail.

Marcella Zoia was given probation, 150 hours of community service and a C$2,000 (£1,165) fine on Tuesday after the stunt in Toronto, Canada in 2019.

The prank by Ms Zoia, 20, was filmed and posted to social media, where it quickly went viral, gaining hundreds of thousands of views.

Prosecutors had sought six months in prison for Ms Zoia. Her sentencing was delayed several times because of coronavirus but finally went ahead remotely on Tuesday.

She was "ecstatic" to escape jail, her lawyer Gregory Leslie told local reporters and "maybe had a tear or two in her eyes" at the news. Ms Zoia gained an adult criminal record.

The video, which first surfaced on Snapchat, showed Ms Zoia throwing a folding wooden chair from her balcony in a tower block flat onto the Gardiner Expressway, a very busy multi-lane road, in February 2019.

No one was hurt in the incident. But the clip soon came to the attention of local police, who charged her with mischief endangering life, mischief endangering property and common nuisance.

Ms Zoia said last year she was "very sorry for her actions" and added that she had been drinking the night before the incident and was under "peer pressure," local media reported.

Ms Zoia gained some local notoriety, even getting cast in a music video by rapper Drake, who is from Toronto.

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