City police have arrested a woman they believe is responsible for defrauding several businesses by stealing identities.
The fraud investigation was launched following a complaint that a Calgary woman had filed a loan application after stealing the identity of a local business owner.
Ultimately, the woman was sentenced to a non-incarceration sentence after most of the charges were dropped.
But it was alleged the woman placed a deposit on a business that was for sale and then used information from that effort to apply for a loan.
In a separate instance, police allege the woman gained personal employee information provided for payroll purposes while posing as a purchaser of a business.
She then used that information to obtain credit, say city police.
It eventually became clear, say police, that a number of businesses and individuals had fallen victim to similar identity scams, with that stolen information used to apply for loans or obtain credit.
The alarm was raised after financial institutions contacted the people whose names were used, only to find they hadn’t applied for loans or credit.
Ashley Venn, 33, is charged with five counts of personation, five counts of fraud over $5,000 and one count of forgery.
She goes by the alias Ashley Curran.
Ultimately, in a settlement reached in 2023, she pleaded guilty to fraud over $5,000 and was given a five-year conditional sentence. The other charges were withdrawn.
Though police have identified eight victims they say are linked to Venn, it’s believed others have also had their personal or business information compromised.
One of Venn’s alleged victims said she was selling her Calgary hair salon last summer when the suspect showed interest in it.
“I believed in her so much, that she was 100 per cent the person to take over my business,” said Pearl Farewell.
By gaining access to an electronic drop box, verbal prodding and posing as a lawyer, Farewell said Venn was able to gather enough personal information to steal up to $100,000 in loans, actions that left her with no business to sell after 19 years at its helm.
“It’s just a nightmare with enough twists for a Netflix series, it went on for several months that you’re wondering who’s going to call to settle some fraud loan,” she said.
“We’re just hard-working people and it’s just terrible somebody can do this.”
It’s vital the public protect their personal information through regular credit checks and by examining bank statements, said Sgt. Matt Frederiksen of the CPS’s fraud team, and if they suspect they’ve been scammed, to contact their financial institution immediately.
“Identity theft can be devastating for victims if their credit and finances can be ruined,” said Frederiksen.
Anyone who suspects their identity has been stolen can call police at 403-266-1234 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn
]]>Convicted Cochrane conman Scott Brooks could be forced to serve up to a 15-year prison term if he doesn’t pay a court-ordered fine of nearly $1-million.
In a written decision posted online, Justice Robert Armstrong sentenced Brooks to a 10-year penitentiary sentence in connection with multiple fraud schemes committed over an eight-year period.
But the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge also agreed with Crown prosecutor Aaron Rankin that a fine in an amount equivalent to the money Brooks bilked from his victims of $924,954, in lieu of a forfeiture order was appropriate.
Armstrong ordered the fine to be paid within the first eight years of Brooks’ 10-year term.
“In default of payment, Mr. Brooks shall serve a five-year period of imprisonment, consecutively to the term already imposed,” Armstrong wrote.
The judge noted there was no evidence before the court that Brooks had any assets that could be the subject of a forfeiture order.
“Mr. Brooks obtained approximately $924,954 through the frauds that are the subject of these proceedings. Those funds constitute proceeds of crime,” the judge said.
“There is no evidence that those proceeds remain available for seizure or forfeiture and the record supports the conclusion that the monies have long since been spent, dissipated, transferred, or otherwise rendered unavailable.”
Armstrong noted Brooks’ current financial circumstances and his lengthy prison term make it unlikely he will have funds in the near future and a fine with prison in default may appear punitive.
“However, Parliament has expressly contemplated that a fine in lieu of forfeiture may be imposed even where immediate payment is unlikely. The purpose of the order is not punitive in the ordinary sense but to ensure that crime does not pay.
“Having regard to the amount of proceeds obtained, the duration of the offence conduct, the sophistication of the frauds, and the need to deprive Mr. Brooks of the economic benefit of his crimes, I am satisfied that a fine in the amount of $924,954 is appropriate.”
Over a period of about eight years, Brooks conned multiple victims to fork over cash to fund phony investment opportunities he made up.
“He repeatedly persuaded victims to advance additional funds by assuring them that success was imminent and that one further payment was necessary to unlock the profits that were supposedly just around the corner,” Armstrong said.
The judge also declined to give Brooks enhanced credit for his time in custody. Last October the judge revoked his bail finding he was intentionally delaying proceedings.
“He feigned illness and manipulated his medications to manufacture medical crises requiring hospitalization and thereby prevent the trial from proceeding. I also found that he repeatedly changed counsel and engaged in a pattern of conduct that significantly delayed the progression of these proceedings,” Armstrong said.
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]]>The prosecution will not seek to conduct a preliminary inquiry in the case of a Calgary man charged with murdering his two children, court heard Wednesday.
Crown prosecutor Carla MacPhail told Justice Lloyd Robertson it would be up to defence counsel Clayton Rice to determine if a hearing testing the evidence prior to trial is required.
Defence lawyer Heather Ferg appeared in Calgary Court of Justice on Rice’s behalf and asked that the case be adjourned to Sept. 10, while the trial counsel reviews the Crown’s most recent disclosure.
Rice’s client, who can’t be named because of a publication ban on the identities of his two victims, faces two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter.
The children were found dead in a vehicle in the 4500 block of 14th Street N.W. on the morning of April 30.
The charges allege they were killed the previous day.
In the court appearance before Robertson, Ferg asked that the accused’s attendance be excused, indicating he is currently in custody in Medicine Hat.
She indicated Rice would need to meet with his client to discuss the most recent disclosure received from the Crown in asking for an adjournment of more than a month.
MacPhail said based on the documentation provided the adjournment was justified.
“Disclosure’s quite large,” the prosecutor said.
She said the defence had initially received a first round of Crown evidence before two more were provided more recently.
MacPhail said the next step in the case will have to be determined by Rice once he has gone over the disclosure with his client.
“The Crown is not seeking a preliminary inquiry,” she said.
“The next step will be for him to advise whether he is.”
MacPhail also indicated at the next appearance she will be filing a new charging information, changing the current allegation the deaths occurred in Calgary.
X: @KMartinCourts
]]>Evidence commenced Tuesday to determine if two Calgary men will stand trial for fraud for allegedly swindling a Bowness community group of more than $66,000.
Joshua Tyler Bredo and Nathan Michael Mizera each face a single count of fraud in relation to their involvement with the Bowness Ratepayers Scout and Guide Association between Jan. 1, 2023, and the end of April 2024.
They were charged by Calgary police in June of 2024, months after the two accused filed a lawsuit against multiple parties, including the Calgary Police Service, alleging corruption.
Before Crown prosecutor Erin Norman began calling evidence before Justice Kristin Fahlman, Bredo, who is representing himself, asked for and was granted a publication ban on testimony.
Norman told the Calgary Court of Justice judge she expects to call up to five witnesses over the course of the scheduled three-day preliminary inquiry, which will determine if there is sufficient evidence to put before a jury.
Norman also said Bredo has requested at least one further witness to be made available for cross-examination.
Defence counsel Leanndria Halcro, who acts for Mizera, has not requested additional witnesses be presented.
In a statement of claim filed in Calgary Court of King’s Bench by the pair before they were charged, Bredo and Mizera filed a lawsuit seeking damages of at least $3.5 million against “state actors and law enforcement defendants,” including the CPS and some of their members.
In the 33-page claim, the two accused alleged they were victimized by members of the Bowness Ratepayers Scout and Guide Hall Association, the organization they are accused of defrauding.
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The claim, which has not been tested in court, identifies two groups of defendants, civilian and corporate defendants, and state actors and law enforcement defendants, but only seeks damages from the second group.
Among the latter is Det. Sheldon Graham, whose father, Harold — who died in September 2023 — served as association president for more than four decades, the lawsuit states.
It claims the detective abused his position by accessing and disseminating information regarding Bredo’s criminal past, which involved a manslaughter conviction in connection with a 2011 B.C. homicide, although the sentencing decision can be found online.
“This unlawful disclosure (by Graham) was not for any legitimate law enforcement purpose but was instead intended to incite prejudice, interfere with Bredo and Mizera’s employment (with the association) and facilitate their wrongful termination,” the lawsuit alleges.
The two men were fired from the Bowness association on April 29, 2024.
Both Bredo and Mizera are at liberty.
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]]>Taking part in the unprovoked fatal assault on a Calgary teen has landed the older of two brothers convicted in his death an eight-year prison term.
But because of enhanced credit for pre-sentencing custody, plus credit for time spent on house arrest, the now-20-year-old offender will have about four years and four months left to serve.
Justice Allison Kuntz rejected submissions by defence counsel Andrea Urquhart that her client had served the equivalent of more than a 3½-year prison term, meaning a sentence of time served plus probation was warranted.
The Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge agreed with Crown prosecutor Vicki Faulkner that the offender’s conduct placed him in the highest range of manslaughter cases.
Faulkner had sought a sentence in the seven- to nine-year range for the confessed killer, who pleaded guilty last Oct. 31 to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the Sept. 5, 2023, assault on 18-year-old Danillo Canales Glenn.
The offender and his brother, a minor at the time, had attacked Canales Glenn as he was shooting hoops with two friends on the outdoor rink pad in the southeast community of Copperfield.
Because his accomplice was a youth who can’t be named, the older brother’s identity is similarly protected.
He admitted he and his younger sibling, then 16, were staring at the basketball players when Canales Glenn asked them what they were looking at.
The two brothers then jumped the boards and the offender bear-sprayed the victim before assaulting him, while his brother fatally stabbed him, according to a statement of facts admitted at the time of his guilty plea.
Kuntz rejected suggestions the attack was a spontaneous act that warranted a lesser punishment than the one sought by the prosecution.
“He initiated the violence by incapacitating an unarmed victim,” she noted.
“A substantial custodial sentence is required.”
Kuntz said the brothers went to the area of the community centre after arming themselves, unlike some manslaughter cases where a weapon was retrieved after an initial confrontation.
“(He) went to the park with bear spray,” she said.
“This is a powerful weapon meant to deter bears in the wild.”
The judge added the two brothers had gone to the area with their hoods up to disguise themselves.
Outside court, Urquhart said she will appeal the sentence.
The younger sibling, who was earlier convicted of a reduced charge of manslaughter, was sentenced to 12 more months in custody followed by six months under community supervision, after spending 25 months at the Calgary Young Offender Centre.
Both brothers were initially charged with second-degree murder.
The younger killer’s sentence is also under appeal .
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]]>A southern Alberta teenager is accused of stealing cattle and fraudulently selling cattle following a police cattle-rustling investigation.
On Feb. 7, 2026, Diamond Valley RCMP got a report that five long-horned cows had been stolen from a pasture in the Eden Valley area.
The investigation revealed that a person had sold cattle through Fort Macleod and Picture Butte auction markets in Fort Macleod and Picture Butte, and provided documents which are believed to be fraudulent, said RCMP in a Friday news release.
Investigators could not verify several people listed on bills of sale and also found the registered cattle owner had not authorized the sales, said police.
Southern Alberta resident Colin Starling, 18, has been charged with two counts of both theft of cattle over $5,000 and trafficking stolen property over $5,000. He also faces three counts of uttering forged documents.
Starling is scheduled to appear in a Diamond Valley court on Aug. 25.
]]>The province’s top court has upheld a decision to throw out sexual-assault charges against a central Alberta man incapable of communicating in any meaningful way.
In a written decision posted online, a three-member Alberta Court of Appeal panel agreed with Justice Debra Yungwirth that the prosecution of Kendal Longclaws would violate his Charter right to a fair trial, as he could not have proceedings interpreted for him.
“Mr. Longclaws is deaf and cannot speak, read or write,” the appeal judges noted.
“He does not communicate in a recognized sign language.”
Longclaws, now 34, faced six counts of sexual interference and two of sexual assault involving three complainants, which the appeal judges described as “serious charges of sexual violence against children.”
The assaults involving two of the complainants allegedly occurred between Feb. 1, 2012, and Sept. 7, 2016, and against a third complainant between March 1 and 30, 2021.
The Maskwacis man has been deaf since birth, cannot read or write, and communicates with his parents and relatives using a mix of improvised hand signals, facial expressions and simple vocalizations.
Crown lawyer Matthew Griener had argued Yungwirth erred by not granting a prosecution application to have Longclaws assessed for fitness to stand trial before considering whether a stay requested by defence lawyer Kenneth Sockett was appropriate.
“The Crown submits that an accused person who is unable to communicate may also suffer from a mental disorder, which would support ordering a fitness assessment before determining whether a stay should issue,” the appeal judges said.
“Defence counsel does not take issue with this assertion; rather, he argues that it simply does not matter in this case as there is no evidence Mr. Longclaws suffers from a mental disorder and, in any event, he cannot participate in a fitness assessment because he cannot communicate.”
The appeal judges said the Wetaskiwin Court of King’s Bench judge’s decision to decline a fitness assessment warranted deference.
“The trial judge found there was ‘no evidence of a mental illness or psychiatric disorder that would constitute a mental disorder as contemplated by the Criminal Code,'” they said.
“In reviewing the decision to enter a stay, an appellate court should only intervene if a trial judge ‘misdirects him or herself in law, commits a reviewable error of fact, or renders a decision that is ‘so clearly wrong as to amount to an injustice.’ ”
The Appeal Court noted a finding that Longclaws was unfit to stand trial would remove him from the criminal justice system and place him under the power of the Alberta Review Board, which could potentially make him subject to an indefinite hospital detention.
“An accused person found unfit to stand trial may face significant deprivations of personal liberty without ever having been found guilty of an offence,” they wrote.
— With files from Jonny Wakefield
]]>A drunk behind the wheel of a car is like “a bullet to the head” of anyone in their path, a judge said Thursday in sentencing a repeat impaired driver who killed his best friend to five years in prison.
Justice Shane Parker said while Kane Anignostis Burrows, 20, has taken steps to deal with his alcoholism, he still has a long road ahead of him .
“Never take a sip again,” Parker told the Calgary man before sentencing him for killing his best friend in a Dec. 23, 2024, crash and following that up with a drunken, high-speed flight from police eight months later that ended in a massive crash.
“You’re getting there. You now know and accept you can’t ever have one drink.”
But the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge said it wasn’t the booze that was to blame for Burrows’ conduct, which resulted in the death of his friend, Zachary Legault, when he struck a parked crane off Glenmore Trail S.W. after a night of reckless driving.
“You used the word accident. It is offensive to use that term for both horrific incidents,” Parker said.
“While the booze is the gunpowder priming his impulsive, reckless decisions, it’s him behind the wheel. Behind the wheel drunk is a bullet to the head of anyone near a roadway.”
Crown prosecutor Kay De Boer argued a total sentence of 5½ years would be appropriate, considering Burrows was already under a driver’s licence suspension before the deadly crash.
He was still under that same suspension when he fled police nine months later, De Boer noted.
And she said Burrows should not be given significant credit for the fact he had no criminal record before the crash which killed his friend.
“This type of offence is ordinarily committed by law-abiding citizens,” she said.
De Boer told Parker that Burrows had a significant bad driving record before his first offence.
“When Mr. Burrows had the fatal collision he was already on conditions from bad driving,” she said.
In March and September of 2024 he received fines for failing to obey a traffic control device sandwiched around a May 2024 careless driving conviction which resulted in a one-month driving suspension.
Then in October he received an Immediate Roadside Sanction for impaired driving after refusing a breathalyzer which involved a 15-month suspension of his licence.
“It was only two months after being in an IRS fail (suspension) that the accident occurred,” De Boer said.
Repeat drunk driver knows he’s an alcoholic said lawyer
But in seeking a four-year sentence for Burrows’ two sets of charges, defence counsel Alain Hepner argued his client has learned his lesson.
“He admits he’s an alcoholic,” Hepner said, telling Parker his client started drinking at 13 and by 14 or 15 was getting up in the middle of the night to take “shots.”
“Alcohol’s his demon,” the lawyer said.
Hepner said a psychological report prepared by Dr. Patrick Baillie showed Burrows has insight into his addiction.
“He has learned ‘I can’t have one drink,'” the lawyer said.
The night he killed his best friend and badly injured another pal, Kristjan Kuqali, Burrows’ alcohol consumption clouded his rational thinking, Hepner submitted.
“Twenty below weather, top down in a BMW,” he said, of the fact Burrows was racing around the city in his mother’s stolen car with the convertible top down despite the frigid temperature.
Hepner said a four-year term would send a message to both his client and other potential drunk drivers who need to be deterred from getting behind the wheel.
“I just ask the court not to sacrifice that to any hope of rehabilitation,” he said.
At Hepner’s request Parker recommended most of Burrows’ time be served at Bowden Institution so he can be near his Calgary family.
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]]>The six-week delay in a historical sexual assault case caused by a lack of court resources was enough to breach the accused’s Charter rights, a Calgary judge has ruled.
In a written decision posted online Tuesday, Justice Indra Maharaj ordered a judicial stay of the accused’s charge because of the unreasonable delay in bringing him to trial.
Because the accused will not go to trial and perhaps be exonerated, Postmedia will not be naming him.
In her decision, Maharaj noted the 37-year-old suspect’s trial in connection with an Oct. 14, 2013, sexual assault charge was set to run for one day on May 19.
But on that date the case “could not proceed as a result of a lack of court resources,” Maharaj noted.
Because the charging information was originally sworn on Nov. 20, 2024, the presumptive 18-month cut-off point established by the Supreme Court for trials in provincial courts was the following day.
The accused’s new trial date was set for July 2, 43 days in excess of the 18-month period.
Maharaj found none of the time period involved in getting the accused’s case to trial fell at the feet of the defence.
She agreed with defence lawyer Spencer Sikora that the delay caused by a lack of court resources resulted in a breach of his client’s right to be tried within a timely fashion.
Maharaj said the inability of the Calgary Court of Justice to hear the case on May 19 did not amount to an exceptional circumstance that justified exceeding the 18-month ceiling.
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She noted the Crown and defence were prepared to proceed on May 19, the complainant and two other Crown witnesses were present and there was a judge assigned and prepared to hear the case.
“What was lacking was a staffed courtroom,” Maharaj said.
She said knowing the ceiling would be reached the following day, the prosecutor could have discussed with colleagues delaying their matters instead and proceeded on May 19.
“I am not satisfied that (the 43 days) qualifies as an exceptional circumstance, particularly as of late when the resources in the Alberta Court of Justice are balanced on the blade of a very thin knife, and the party who had the greatest opportunity to mitigate the delay was the Crown,” Maharaj said.
“A judicial stay of proceedings is the appropriate remedy and, therefore, the application by the defence for a judicial stay of proceedings is granted.”
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]]>Confessed killer Robert Joseph Matthews was “primed” for crime when he fatally shot a homeless Calgary man, but the Crown failed to prove that included murder, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Justice Lisa Silver found Matthews, who is now 28-years-old, set out in the early morning hours of Sept. 9, 2023, along with a teenage accomplice, for the purpose of committing a significant offence but the shooting of Jordan Jacques-Vetten during a botched robbery only amounted to manslaughter.
The Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge said the circumstantial evidence presented by Crown prosecutors Carla MacPhail and Don Couturier didn’t establish Matthews had the intent for murder when he shot Jacques-Vetten in the upper chest.
Silver found Matthews recruited an underaged accomplice, who was also convicted of manslaughter and handed a youth sentence, to wreak criminal havoc on Calgary that day.
“Mr. Matthews presented himself as a significant figure in Calgary’s criminal milieu,” Silver noted, of the offender’s original plan to rob ATM machines while heavily armed with multiple firearms.
“This evidence … shows Mr. Matthews wanted to commit crimes that night and was ready and willing to commit violence, including the use of a firearm.”
When the ATM plan was abandoned, Matthews still wanted to commit some form of offence, Silver said.
“The one consistent feature was Mr. Matthews’ desire to do something,” she said.
“He drove around (with his accomplice) looking for an opportunity.”
That arose when they spotted Jacques-Vetten on a residential street in the northwest community of Capitol Hill shortly before 4 a.m. that morning.
“Mr. Vetten, who was walking (around) with his life’s belongings in his backpack … presented such an opportunity,” Silver said.
“They acted immediately without prior planning.”
The youth “sprung” from Matthews’ car armed with a hatchet and confronted Jacques-Vetten, 33, who was unhoused at the time and had earlier completed a shift at his new job at a downtown restaurant.
Silver said a combination of Matthews wish to commit a criminal act, coupled with drug use by the two assailants, “devolved into unplanned, opportunistic violence.”
When Jacques-Vetten refused to give up his backpack, instead handing the youth his cellphone, Matthews came up behind the teen and fired a shot into the victim’s upper left chest.
Silver agreed with defence counsel Rebecca Snukal that the Crown had failed to establish her client intended to kill Jacques-Vetten or cause him grievous bodily harm that was likely to cause his death.
A date for Matthews’ sentencing hearing will be set July 10.
Matthews, who is currently serving a federal sentence on unrelated charges, remains in custody.
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]]>The motorist who drove a stolen van recklessly through Calgary before running a red light and killing a young girl has lived a life of immense trauma, the author of a report into his indigenous background told court Friday.
Kate Webb-Harris, who prepared the report on Duane Nepoose, said that trauma has significantly impacted his brain development.
“His brain has been compromised,” Webb-Harris told defence lawyer Sam Taylor, as part of sentencing submissions in Nepoose’s case.
Nepoose, 31, pleaded guilty to multiple charges a years ago in connection with a Boxing Day 2024 crime spree that ended in him running a red light at Macleod Trail and Southland Drive, colliding with two other vehicles and killing nine-year-old Victoria Desjardin s.
Webb-Harris, her voice often cracking with emotion, said she uses a 10-point scale to determine brain trauma, explaining a four out of 10 shows a person’s brain “has developed in a different way.”
“He’s a 10 out of 10,” she said of the offender.
“They’re in survival mode,” Webb-Harris said of those experiencing the type of childhood trauma Nepoose went through.
“I call it caveman brain.”
Webb-Harris told Taylor her report was mostly based on hours of interviews with Nepoose as well as speaking to his sister.
From that she learned he grew up in an environment that included physical and sexual abuse and neglect and intergenerational trauma that included both their parents surviving residential schooling.
“He was always being sexually assaulted and beaten,” Webb-Harris said.
“He doesn’t recall living with his father,” she told Taylor.
“He was told his father committed suicide when he was only a few months old.”
At an earlier court appearance Crown prosecutor Todd Buziak detailed Nepoose’s crime spree that ended in the fatal crash, which also badly injured the dead girl’s mother and older sister, as well as another motorist.
Buziak said the HAWCS police helicopter tracked Nepoose as he sped along multiple roadways in the southern part of Calgary, at one point accelerating to approximately 170 km/h.
Video from HAWCS, played in court, captured Nepoose eventually heading northbound on Macleod Trail, running red lights at 109th Avenue and 99th Avenue, before striking the silver Pontiac Vibe being driven by Victoria’s mother, Amanda Reitmeier.
In sentencing submissions in April, Buziak suggested a prison term in the 9½- to 10½-year range would be appropriate in the circumstances in the case.
Taylor suggested a sentence in the five-year, nine-month to seven-year, three-month range would be a fit punishment.
After submissions, Nepoose addressed court.
“I want to say that I’m sorry to the family, sorry for taking away moments that should have been,” he said.
Justice Indra Maharaj will hand down his sentence at a later date.
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]]>Jail is required for convicted Calgary conman Dave Guylenz Mitchell Beauvais, a city judge ruled Wednesday.
Calgary Court of King’s Bench Justice Darren Reed agreed with Crown prosecutor Greg Whiteside that the community-based conditional sentence sought by defence lawyer Funda Mutlay wouldn’t adequately punish her client.
Instead, Reed sentenced Beauvais, who has since relocated to Ottawa, to 28 months in a federal penitentiary. Whiteside had proposed a 30-month term.
In seeking that punishment during sentencing submissions in April, Whiteside argued schemes like the one perpetrated by Beauvais take advantage of the anonymity of the internet and require deterrence.
“The forms and means of fraud are proliferating in society,” he told Reed.
Whiteside said much of Beauvais’ scamming occurred during the pandemic, when even more business was pushed online.
Beauvais’ sentencing decision was delayed to allow him to travel to Calgary from Ottawa. During sentencing submissions the offender appeared via video link from the nation’s capital.
Mutlay had sought a conditional sentence, saying such a term could still meet the goals of general deterrence and denunciation.
“Incarceration is not the only mechanism through which those objectives can be met,” she said, in proposing 12 months of house arrest as part of a two-year conditional term.
“A custodial sentence here would add little to deterrence,” Mutlay told Reed.
Beauvais, 39, pleaded guilty last fall to charges of fraud and uttering forged documents for a scheme that used phony passports, driver’s licences and social insurance cards to make false claims for loans from Alberta Student Aid programs.
Fraudsters collected personal information of individuals and forged documents used to make student loan applications and open bank accounts to receive disbursements.
Loans to 15 different named individuals whose identities were stolen were approved, totaling more than a half-million dollars, although just under $200,000 was actually disbursed.
Mutlay told court her client was experiencing instability and homelessness in his life and was desperate to make ends meet at the time.
Reed found the fact Beauvais’ crimes involved identity theft made them more aggravating than fraud offences involving employee theft.
“Courts seem more inclined to grant CSOs in the latter than the former. I find this is due to the more egregious nature of identity theft,” Reed said.
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]]>Amassing and sharing a large collection of child pornography, including hentai-style Japanese anime, has landed a Calgary man a three-year prison term.
Justice John Bascom on Wednesday agreed with Crown prosecutor Marta Juwziak that a sentence of two years or less, which would allow the judge to add a period of probation, was an insufficient punishment for Gabor Akos Uzsoki’s crimes.
But the Calgary Court of Justice judge stopped short of imposing the four-year sentence Juzwiak had proposed.
Defence counsel Michael Phillips had sought a two-year prison term which would have allowed Bascom to add on a period of probation.
The judge said because Uzsoki not only possessed thousands of images and videos, but actively traded in them, a harsher sentence was warranted.
Uzsoki, 32, earlier pleaded guilty to 2024 charges of possession and distribution of child pornography, now categorized in the Criminal Code as child sexual abuse and exploitation material.
Juwziak said that while the charges only covered a period of months in 2024, a forensic audit showed Uzsoki was collecting the material for years.
“He possessed thousands of images and videos of CSAEM,” Juwziak said.
“Over half the materials possessed, numerically speaking, were hentai-style. The rest were videos and images of real children, some of who have been identified.
“This means that he possessed thousands of videos and images of real children who had been sexually abused.”
Hentai is a form of Japanese pornographic anime or manga.
The prosecutor also produced seven victim impact statements detailing the ongoing trauma victims of child pornography suffer.
“The redistribution … is a never-ending cycle,” Juwziak said.
“They worry about how redistribution is causing them to have nightmares … PTSD.”
Phillips read a prepared statement from Uzsoki expressing remorse for his conduct.
“I would like to apologize to the victims and their families for my terrible actions,” he wrote.
“It was wrong, immoral and the worst thing I have ever done in my life.”
]]>The Calgary woman accusing her ex-boyfriend of raping her conceded Tuesday she did not use air quotes when she first told police he “woke up” after forcing her to have sex.
But the witness, who can’t be identified, said the next two times she said the accused “woke up” after non-consensual sex with her, she used the universal sign to show she was using his words.
Crown prosecutor Kenna Morris showed the woman two video clips from her Oct. 2, 2024, interview with a Calgary police detective.
Morris played the videos in court after defence counsel Allan Fay noted in cross-examination of the witness on Monday that on three occasions she said the accused “woke up” after the sexual encounter.
Fay’s client, who can’t be named because he and the complainant are former intimate partners, is raising the defence of sexsomnia, a condition where people involuntarily commit sexual acts while asleep.
In her police interview the complainant said the accused, who was invited to sleep over following a movie night on Jan. 1, 2022, pinned her to her bed and raped her while she struggled and screamed at him to stop.
“He didn’t get off me until he finished what he was doing and then woke up and claimed that he was sleeping,” she told the officer.
The witness acknowledged that on the video she didn’t show “woke up” was a quote.
“To my knowledge I thought I gave air quotes,” she said.
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Morris then played an additional passage where she twice mentions the accused waking up following the non-consensual encounter.
“Did you observe any air quotes?” the prosecutor asked.
“When I said he woke up,” the woman replied.
The case has now adjourned until the fall for the Crown and potentially the defence to call experts on sleep disorders.
A continuation date will be set next month.
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]]>The Calgary rape suspect running a “sexsomnia” defence told his ex-girlfriend he had an “out-of-body” experience during non-consensual sex, the woman testified Monday.
The complainant, who can’t be named, testified her then-former lover was at her northeast Calgary home the evening of Jan. 1, 2023, where they watched their favourite Christmas movie together.
When they were done, she went off to bed but invited the accused to spend the night, as he occasionally did.
But she said she awoke later to find her ex trying to remove her “jammie” shorts and underwear, which he eventually did.
“I was confused about what was happening because I was half asleep,” she told Crown prosecutor Kenna Morris.
“I pushed his hand and said, ‘No, I’m too tired.’ He wanted to have intercourse and I said ‘no,'” she testified, wiping away tears with a tissue.
“He managed to get everything off below my waist and he began to have sex with me without my permission … after I was repeatedly telling him ‘no.'”
She told Morris she struck him while continuing to tell him to get off her in a voice that was “quite loud, yelling.”
“I was trying to hit him to get off of me, while repeatedly telling him no and yelling at him,” she said.
“Did he respond in any way?” Morris asked.
“No, he just kept going. He continued to have sex with me without my permission.”
She said after “eight minutes of me fighting to get him off of me” the accused completed the sexual act.
“He proceeds to tell me he woke up and was having an out-of-body experience and a dream and he did not know what he was doing and said he was sleeping through the whole thing,” the complainant said.
“I said ‘what the hell?’ and he said he didn’t know what was happening, he thought he was dreaming and he was having an out-of-body experience, his exact words to me.”
She told Morris the accused wasn’t mumbling or slurring his words.
“It was very clear,” the witness said.
She immediately got up and showered before telling the accused to leave her home.
In cross-examination, defence counsel Allan Fay suggested that on at least two occasions in 2022 they had sexual encounters that his client was not aware of the following day.
The witness said she did not recall any such exchanges but could not rule them out.
The defence had planned to call University of Toronto professor Dr. Colin Shapiro, an expert in sleep disorders, including sexsomnia, the act of involuntarily having sex while asleep, but after problems arose with his evidence, Fay withdrew his request to call him as an expert.
Justice Jim Eamon has given Fay time to find another expert in the field.
]]>Bad legal advice led convicted Calgary murderer Phuc Nguyen to miss his window of opportunity to commence a faint hope bid to reduce his parole ineligibility, he testified Thursday.
But that didn’t amount to a breach of his Charter rights, Justice David Labrenz ruled, in denying the killer’s request to file his application outside of the period allowed under the Criminal Code.
Defence lawyer Alexandra Seaman, who was fired by Nguyen before proceedings concluded in Calgary Court of King’s Bench after a falling out with her client, had argued Correctional Service Canada employees didn’t do enough to ensure the killer was aware when he must file his bid.
But Labrenz agreed with Crown prosecutor Carla MacPhail that CSC wasn’t the cause of Nguyen’s decision to not file his application for a judicial review of whether he was a suitable candidate for a hearing before a Calgary jury.
Under the Criminal Code, murderers still entitled to faint hope applications, which were abolished on Dec. 2, 2011, have 90 days from the 15th anniversary of their incarceration to commence the judicial process.
MacPhail said for Nguyen to successfully prove his liberty right under the Charter was breached, he’d have to establish “the harm complained about was caused by a state agent. Because if not, the Charter does not apply.”
Nguyen, under cross-examination by MacPhail, admitted that from the outset correctional officials indicated his first date of eligibility to initiate a faint hope application was Oct. 3, 2021, exactly 15 years to the day of his arrest for fatally stabbing his wife’s lover.
But Nguyen said after applying to Legal Aid on Sept. 22, 2021, he was ultimately assigned a lawyer who incorrectly told him his eligibility date was in 2023, 15 years from the date of his June 20, 2008, conviction for first-degree murder in the Oct. 2, 2006, death of Benny Nguyen, no relation.
Seaman said CSC had obligations under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to ensure her client was aware of his right to pursue an application.
Labrenz found Nguyen’s evidence, both under cross-examination, conducted via video link from the Williams Head Institution on Vancouver Island, and in a sworn affidavit, contained unreliable information.
He also determined that bad legal advice provided by a non-state agent could not amount to a breach of the offender’s Charter rights.
“I agree with the argument put before the court from the Crown that even if what Mr. Nguyen said in his testimony and his affidavit was reliable and credible, the difficulties he’s suffered from in terms of applying for parole does not rise from a state action or inaction,” Labrenz said.
The judge also noted Nguyen was given an opportunity to adjourn his application to expand it to include an argument ineffective counsel resulted in a miscarriage of justice, but he declined that offer.
“As such, that issue is not presently before me,” Labrenz said.
Because it’s been nearly five years since his first window of opportunity closed, Nguyen is entitled to commence a judicial application for a jury hearing on Jan. 3, 2027, but must do so within 90 days of that date.
He’s currently serving a life sentence without the right to seek parole for a minimum 25 years.
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]]>Cochrane swindler Scott Brooks offered a lengthy apology Thursday in a Calgary courtroom, but not for conning his victims out of nearly $1 million.
Instead, Brooks told Justice Robert Armstrong he was sorry for wasting so much court time, as he dragged his trial for a year before ultimately pleading guilty in March.
“I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on this given that I’ve been in custody for all this time,” Brooks began, referring to the fact Armstrong revoked his bail last December and ordered him into custody at the request of Crown prosecutor Aaron Rankin.
Rankin argued Brooks was manipulating his heart condition to delay proceedings and Armstrong agreed, finding the offender repeatedly misused his medication to prolong the already lengthy prosecution against him.
“I can’t give back the time I have taken from you, I wish I could,” Brooks told the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge.
“I wish there was something I could do to give back the time that I’ve stolen from you.”
Brooks, who had confessed to police shortly after he was charged in connection with fraud-related offences dating from Jan. 1, 2010, to May 1, 2018, said he was motivated by fear to drag out the proceedings.
“I’m a coward. I got scared. Nobody wants to face this and I didn’t want to face it, I just didn’t.”
He entered a surprise guilty plea mid-trial on March 3, to 17 charges.
Rankin argued a 10-year prison term was a suitable punishment for Brooks’ crimes, while his lawyer Kale Vigor suggested a four- to six-year penitentiary term would be sufficient, arguing there were mitigating factors, including her client’s remorse, which justified a sentence less than what the Crown was seeking.
Rankin also asked Armstrong to issue a forfeiture order of $924,954 to compensate Brooks’ victims.
Armstrong will hand down his sentencing decision next month. Brooks remains in custody.
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]]>Police have more than a “hope” technology will adapt to allow them to extract data from former mayor Jyoti Gondek’s cell phone, the officer leading a municipal corruption investigation said Wednesday.
In grilling Det. Matthew White on why investigators want to hold onto Gondek’s seized device for another nine months, lawyer Rebecca Snukal suggested police may never be able to crack the former mayor’s passcode.
Snukal wants Justice Allan Fradsham to deny an application by counsel for the Calgary Police Service to extend the time investigators can keep Gondek’s phone, which was seized during a search of her Calgary home three months ago.
CPS lawyer Doug Taylor wants the Calgary Court of Justice judge to extend possession of the seized phone to a full year in hopes technology will allow investigators to crack the passcode.
At the beginning of proceedings Wednesday, Taylor stressed no one has been charged criminally in the investigation and may never be.
To date, Gondek has not voluntarily provided that information, although White admitted to Snukal police have never asked.
In cross-examining White on his affidavit in support of Taylor’s application, Snukal suggested there was no way for the officer to know when, or if, they’ll ever be able to access the phone’s data.
In his sworn statement, White indicated that current Cellebrite software that digital examiners use to get into locked phones can’t access Gondek’s seized iPhone 17.
“As technology evolves, it is anticipated that a version of Cellebrite will be released which will allow for a brute force . . . extraction on this model of iPhone running recent operating software,” White said in his affidavit. “There is no timeline on if/when this capability will be available.”
“Any idea when this technology will be created?” Snukal asked the detective.
“No, I don’t have that,” White replied.
“You’re relying on hope,” the lawyer suggested.
“There’s hope but there’s also the idea that technology is continuing to evolve,” said White, explaining Cellebrite has to adapt to newer models every time Apple updates a version of iPhone.
The investigation, which according to White’s affidavit is looking into allegations of municipal corruption, obstruction of justice and fabricating evidence, is focused on a proposed land use bylaw which lost on a 6-6 tie, but was later passed when then council member Sean Chu tabled a reconsideration motion.
Gondek, who was not present for the initial count, voted in favour of the bylaw and Chu changed his vote, leading to a 8-5 passing of the motion.
The officer said police received information local developer consultant David White “had been offering campaign donations that exceeded the maximum allowed to councillors in exchange for them tabling a reconsideration motion.”
“A search of White’s phone yielded evidence of the offences (being investigated) and it was determined that Gondek had provided guidance to White on a tactic to approach another councillor in an effort to secure a reconsideration motion,” White wrote.
He admitted to Snukal that he already has a copy of exchanges between the then-mayor and consultant, but can’t determine if information has been deleted.
“I’d like to see them both side by side.”
Fradsham reserved his decision on whether he will extend police possession of Gondek’s cell phone, as well as devices belong to Chu and Oldstreet Development Corporation principal Nathan Robb.
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]]>The target of an ill-fated plot by Airdrie kids based on the TV show To Catch a Predator, pleaded guilty Thursday to breaching court orders he have no contact with minors.
Zain Alnoor Merchant, 38, admitted violating two Criminal Code orders issued in 2022 and 2023, following child pornography-related convictions.
According to a statement of agreed facts, signed by Merchant and his lawyer Rebecca Snukal, and read in by Crown prosecutor Jenny Rees, Merchant agreed to meet with a 12-year-old by an Airdrie park.
The Calgary resident then drove the boy to a 7-Eleven store where he purchased a Gatorade drink for him before they went to a McDonald’s restaurant, where the offender bought the boy a Happy Meal.
They also drove around and chatted.
“Merchant told (the boy) that his number one rule was to ‘respect people’s boundaries,'” Rees told Justice Kristin Fahlman.
“Merchant asked (the boy) if he wanted to do it and when (he) said ‘no’ Merchant said ‘yep, that’s okay.'”
They chatted further, with the offender telling the child he owned a company that delivered “stuff” and spoke about how they met on Snapchat, the prosecutor said.
“(The child) said that Merchant had two cellular phones and showed him photographs and videos of a naked female in a shower and two males engaged in sexual intercourse,” Rees said.
The boy said Merchant had two cellphones, a grey Samsung that contained the images and an iPhone in a red case which he used to purchase the drink and meals.
After being dropped off, the boy met up with friends who he told he had been chatting with a “pedo” and they decided to “catch him.”
The friends went to 7-Eleven, where the boy contacted Merchant to come back, but after he did the boy got into his vehicle and told him his pals had seen him.
“When Merchant stopped at a red light (the boy) got out of the vehicle and the vehicle then sped off.”
Police were able to obtain a licence plate number and traced Merchant to his Calgary home.
After his arrest, investigators were able to find the iPhone, but did not locate the Samsung with the pornographic images shown to the boy, Rees said.
At Snukal’s request, Fahlman ordered an assessment of Merchant by the Forensic Assessment Outpatient Service.
A date for his sentencing hearing will be set next week.
Merchant also faced more serious charges, including kidnapping and sexual contact with a minor, but Rees said those could not be pursued because of a lack of forensic evidence.
Merchant remains at liberty pending sentencing.
]]>Stoney Nakoda First Nation woman Cynthia Dixon pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter Tuesday for the fatal stabbing of her mother’s abusive partner.
Dixon had been charged with second-degree murder in the Sept. 8, 2023, killing of Donald Nepoose, but Crown prosecutor Ron Simenik accepted a plea from defence counsel Kim Ross’s client to the lesser offence.
Reading from a statement of agreed facts, Simenik detailed for Justice Nick Devlin the events which led to Nepoose being found dead in the basement of his home on the First Nation west of Calgary, bound with ropes.
Simenik said Cochrane RCMP had been called to the residence of Nepoose and his common-law wife, Rena Dixon, after receiving a 911 complaint of a domestic dispute.
Cynthia Dixon, then 47, also lived in the home with her three teenage children, the prosecutor told the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge.
“During the 911 call, Rena Dixon reported that her common-law partner, Donald, had returned to the residence in the early morning hours and had been acting abusive, violent and causing a disturbance within the residence as the others tried to sleep,” Simenik said.
At one point Nepoose assaulted his partner.
During the incident Nepoose went to the basement where he confronted the offender and her younger daughter, Keisha, grabbing the teen around the collar, Semenik said.
“Cindy intervened and pushed Donald away from her daughter, thereby allowing Keisha to flee upstairs.”
It was then Nepoose turned his attention to his wife’s daughter, Simenik said.
“Donald began throwing items in the basement towards her and damaging Cindy’s property, then at one point, charged towards her. Knowing that Donald had a history of abuse towards her mother, Cindy grabbed a nearby massage tool and struck Donald in the head, causing him to fall back,” Simenik said.
She then struck the victim numerous other times causing him blunt force trauma injuries.
“Once Donald regained his stance, he charged at Cindy again, which led her to grab a small paring knife. … With this knife she repeatedly stabbed Donald.”
With Nepoose incapacitated Rena Dixon instructed her daughter to tie the victim up “so that he could not regain his stance and charge toward her again.”
When police and EMS arrived they found the bound Nepoose deceased.
At Ross’s request, Devlin ordered a report into Dixon’s Indigenous background as well as a psychological and risk assessment.
She remains at liberty pending her sentencing hearing.
]]>Fatally shooting a man in a southeast Calgary hotel room has landed a confessed killer a 15-year prison term.
Calgary Court of King’s Bench Justice Chidinma Thompson on Monday accepted a joint Crown and defence submission after Ahmed Abdi Hassan pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter.
Abdi Hassan, 31, had been scheduled to stand trial on a charge of second-degree murder in the March 25, 2024, shooting death of Liban Abdirahman inside a Super 8 hotel room on Shawville Road S.E.
But defence counsel Balfour Der told Thompson his client was maintaining his plea of not guilty to murder and would instead admit a charge of manslaughter with a firearm in Abdirahman’s death.
Crown prosecutor Margot Engley then read in a statement of agreed facts detailing the deadly incident inside room 415 at the hotel.
Engley said Abdi Hassan, Abdirahman and a third man, Mowlid Yusuf, had travelled from Edmonton to Calgary the previous day and were invited by a female acquaintance, Ifrah Hassan, to stay overnight in her room.
There, Abdi Hassan and Abdirahman “consumed a significant amount of alcohol and cocaine throughout the night,” Engley told Thompson.
Hassan left the hotel for an appointment at 12:04 p.m. on March 25 and the homicide occurred about two hours later, the prosecutor said.
“At the preliminary inquiry she described the level of Mr. Abdi Hassan’s intoxication as ‘so bad’ and that he didn’t ‘even know what he was doing at the time,'” Engley said.
While away from the room, Hassan spoke to Yusuf on the phone.
“She could hear Mr. Abdi Hassan and Mr. Abdirahman arguing in the background,” the prosecutor said.
Abdi Hassan has a semi-automatic handgun equipped with a magazine, which was loaded with multiple live rounds of 9mm ammunition, court was told.
“From the doorway area of the hotel room, Mr. Abdi Hassan shot at Mr. Abdirahman, who was slightly further into the hotel room … seven times,” Engley said.
Three of the shots struck him in the back of his body, including one in the back of his head, which perforated the frontal lobe of his brain, the prosecutor said.
Engley said there were multiple aggravating factors to justify a sentence of 15 years, including that Abdi Hassan was not only armed with a gun, but carried it on a regular basis, and the victim was shot from behind.
But Der said his client’s guilty plea not only spared the victim’s family from having to live through a full trial, but also showed his client’s remorse for his crime.
Thompson noted Abdi Hassan also offered an apology to the victim’s mother, who waived him off as he spoke directly towards her.
As part of the joint submission, Abdi Hassan must serve a minimum of half his time in custody before he can seek parole.
With credit for time served on remand, the killer will have a little more than 12 years left to serve.
Der told Thompson that means his client won’t be able to seek his release until June 24, 2032.
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]]>The conviction last week of drug trafficker Dennis Tyler Okeymow should serve as a stark warning to those who illegally sell contraband firearms that their legal jeopardy just got a lot more significant.
In late January or early February 2023, Okeymow sold a rifle to 16-year-old Roman Shewchuk.
On March 12, 2023, the Edmonton teen severely wounded Pizza Hut worker Richard Albert by shooting him in the head.
Then, in the early morning hours of March 16, 2023, Shewchuk fatally shot Edmonton police officers Travis Jordan and Brett Ryan, who were responding to a domestic complaint at the teen’s home.
Shewchuk then turned the firearm on his mother, Kateryna, seriously injuring her, before turning the weapon on himself, ending his life.
Multiple convictions
Okeymow was convicted by Court of King’s Bench Justice John Little of 10 charges, most notably manslaughter with a firearm of the two officers and Shewchuk, as the judge found the offender’s illegal selling of the rifle used in the killings was a contributing cause of the deaths.
Little also convicted Okeymow of criminal negligence causing death, which required a finding his conduct “constituted a marked and substantial departure from what a reasonable person would have done in the circumstances.”
The judge said there may be cases where the passage of time between the illegal gun sale and the dire consequences of the use of the firearm is so extreme as to lead to a finding the unlawful act wasn’t a contributing cause.
“But I do not find that passage of time (six weeks) to be a relevant factor here,” Little said in his written decision.
“In the case at hand, it was not necessary that Mr. Okeymow foresee at the time of the rifle transaction the precise harm that Mr. Shewchuk might cause. It was a reasonably foreseeable risk that the sixteen-year-old purchaser whose preference was a handgun would use the illegally obtained firearm and ammunition to cause harm to others.”
Little noted “firearms are inherently dangerous.”
“A firearm is expressly designed to kill or wound,” he said, quoting from a Supreme Court case.
Along with selling Shewchuk a weapon designed to cause such destruction, Okeymow also sold the rifle with 80 rounds of ammunition, to a minor who could not legally possess it, who was living in an urban area and had previously stated he “needed” a handgun, Little said.
“Defence counsel argues that the law respecting legal causation is intended to narrow responsibility to ‘those who truly bear moral accountability for a death’ and that standard is not met here. But there is no moral innocence in the unlawful sale by Mr. Okeymow, a drug dealer, of a weapon to Mr. Shewchuk, as drug user, who then used it to kill and injure others,” the judge said.
“In this case, I find that Mr. Okeymow’s illegal sale of the firearm was a significant contributing cause to the three deaths and that he cannot benefit from a doubt respecting moral innocence.”
Direct link to deaths
Little said Okemow’s act of illegally selling the rifle to Shewchuk directly contributed to the three deaths.
“Here, but for the sale of the gun to Mr. Shewchuk, it can be said that the deaths by gunshot from that particular gun would not have occurred,” he said.
While Okeymow knew Shewchuk from at least August 2021 and had done drugs with him, there was no direct evidence he was aware of the teen’s struggles with mental health issues, the judge found.
Shewchuk was twice hospitalized for psychosis relating to cannabis use, being last discharged the prior December before falling off his antipsychotic medication and resuming drug use.
While his mental health likely contributed to his shooting spree it wasn’t a necessary factor to find Okeymow responsible.
The illegal sale of firearms is a scourge in society. Hopefully this case will curb that crime.
]]>The nearly 2½ years of physical abuse suffered by a young Calgary boy, who was in a “skeletal” state when finally hospitalized, should land his father a 15-year prison term, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
But the lawyer for Calgarian Matthew Jason Scott said a five-year sentence, followed by 24 months of probation would be a suitable punishment and assist in his client’s rehabilitation.
Defence counsel Shaun Leochko told Justice Ken McLeod that since his client has spent a considerable amount of time in remand, his presentence credit would equate to a four-year jail term.
Since the remaining time in a five-year sentence would be less than two years, McLeod can tack on probation to the sentence, Leochko said.
Crown prosecutor Zailin Lakhoo said a much more significant sentence was warranted for Scott, 41, who pleaded guilty more than a year ago to charges of failing to provide the necessaries of life, forcible confinement and aggravated assault in connection with the abuse of his son between the ages of six and eight.
According to a statement of agreed facts read in by Lakhoo when Scott pleaded guilty on March 18, 2025, the child was abused for a period of nearly 2½ years before he was hospitalized on Sept. 29, 2023.
At that time the boy was “suffering from extreme starvation,” Lakhoo told the Calgary Court of Justice hearing.
She said Scott and the child’s stepmom, Stephanie Alisha Baker, who faces her own set of charges, abused the boy between the time he moved in with them in April 2021, until his hospitalization.
According to pediatrician Dr. Jennifer MacPherson, the child weighed only 16.2 kg (about 36 pounds) on his admission to Alberta Children’s Hospital.
“He was so weak that he could barely walk,” the prosecutor said.
“His appearance was described as skeletal.”
The child was physically abused, mostly by Baker, Lakhoo said, and would be starved as punishment for not following household rules, including for “stealing food.”
He was also regularly confined by being tied to a bed rail with duct tape and zip ties and made to sleep on the floor.
Lakhoo said if McLeod a total punishment of 15 years was excessive he should sentence Scott to no less than 13 years.
Before the judge adjourned the case to October for his decision an emotional Scott addressed the court.
“I’m deeply sorry for my actions towards my son,” he said.
“I have no excuse for what happened. … I really hope that my son will forgive me.”
Scott remains in custody pending McLeod’s sentencing decision.
]]>The circumstantial evidence in the trial of two men charged with the murder of a Rocky View County employee should lead jurors to one conclusion, they’re both guilty, a prosecutor said Thursday.
But the lawyers for murder suspects Elijah Blake Strawberry and Arthur Wayne Penner argued the case against their clients falls far short of probing their guilt.
In her closing address to a Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury, Crown lawyer Photini Papadatou detailed the evidence she says proves Strawberry and Penner are guilty of the second-degree murder of Colin Hough.
Hough was fatally shot in his Rocky View County pickup as he approached the scene of a burning vehicle at the intersection of Range Road 282 and Township Road 250 just east of Calgary.
His vehicle was stolen and sped away from the scene.
Both defence lawyers Rebecca Snukal, for Strawberry, and Alexandra Seaman, for Penner, submitted there were multiple flaws in the Crown’s case which should leave jurors to acquit their clients, including questions about the number of assailants.
But Papadatou said the evidence points to two perpetrators fatally attacking Hough, who collapsed and died at the scene shortly after being shot three times, including one bullet that pierced his heart.
“The offence before you involved two men, two shooters, two guns, two stolen vehicles, two robberies and one death and both these men are responsible,” she said of Strawberry and Penner.
“Are there any other reasonable explanations?” Papadatou asked, rhetorically.
Strawberry and Penner are charged with second-degree murder in connection with Hough’s Aug. 6, 2024, fatal shooting as well as two counts each of armed robbery of the deceased’s work truck and the failed attempt to rob Matthew Andres of his FortisAlberta company vehicle.
The pair had also been charged with attempted murder in the shooting of Andres, who was wounded in his arm when a masked man approached him and shot him before demanding the keys to his pickup.
But Justice Shane Parker told jurors on Wednesday he was entering an acquittal on the charge of attempted murder.
Papadatou said the evidence suggested Strawberry shot Andres with a 9mm handgun while Penner was setting on fire the stolen truck they’d arrived at the scene in, which had a flat tire.
Andres testified that after he was shot he was able to run from his assailant and when he looked back at the scene he saw the burning vehicle and a Rocky View County truck pull up as two men ran up to it and began shooting.
Papadatou said DNA on items found at the scene and in the area, including in Andres moved truck, which got stuck in a ditch, put both Penner and Strawberry there at the time of the killing.
Snukal and Seaman attacked the prosecution theory the DNA evidence was conclusive of guilt.
“It is possible for a person’s DNA to be present when the person is not,” Seaman said.
And both lawyers noted there wasn’t a single eyewitness who placed either accused at the scene.
Parker will instruct jurors on the law before they commence deliberations on Friday.
]]>The murder suspects in the fatal shooting of a Rocky View County worker will not be calling evidence in their defence, their lawyers told a Calgary jury Wednesday.
And jurors were also told one of the charges against Elijah Blake Strawberry and Arthur Wayne Penner was no longer under their consideration.
Calgary Court of King’s Bench Justice Shane Parker said he was withdrawing an allegation the two men attempted to murder Fortis Alberta employee Matthew Andres moments before Colin Hough was fatally gunned down.
“As a matter of law I am withdrawing count two, the attempted murder of Matthew Andres,” Parker said, of the Aug. 6, 2024, allegation the two accused tried to kill Andres.
“I’m entering an acquittal as I would otherwise direct you to do as a matter of law,” the judge said.
“The attempted murder of Mr. Andres is no longer a part of these proceedings. You should not speculate as to the reasons why I made this decision.”
Parker said the jurors will still be tasked with determining whether Strawberry and Penner are guilty of second-degree murder in the killing of Hough, as well as allegations of robbery of both the deceased and Andres.
“The result of count two being withdrawn from your deliberation has nothing to do with counts one, three and four. Your duty going forward is to determine whether the Crown prosecution has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that either Mr. Penner, or Mr. Strawberry are guilty, or not guilty, of those remaining counts.”
Parker then asked defence counsel Alexandra Seaman, for Penner, and Rebecca Snukal, for Strawberry, if either would be calling evidence in their clients’ defence. Both said they would not.
Jurors were then dismissed for the day and instructed to return to court Thursday morning, when they’ll hear final submission from both the Crown and defence.
Parker indicated he would be providing them with final instructions on the law on Friday before 12 of them (two will be randomly selected to leave) retire to begin their deliberations.
Early in the trial which began May 4, jurors heard testimony from Andres, who said he was ambushed and shot while working in the field near the intersection of Township Road 250 and Range Road 282 east of Calgary.
“I looked up and I saw someone come up and pull a face mask over their face so I didn’t see any face at that point,” he testified.
Without warning the individual shot him in the right upper forearm.
“I thought I was going to die.”
He managed to flee to a nearby ditch some distance away and looked back to see that his work truck had been moved and a white GMC pickup approached and slowed down.
“I saw two figures rush out towards the vehicle and heard shots,” Andres said.
A pathologist testified Hough was shot three times, with one of the bullets piercing his heart.
]]>The judge who convicted a Suffield woman of fatally stabbing her elderly husband and then cutting off his arms, made no errors in finding she was guilty of murder, Alberta’s top court ruled Friday.
In a unanimous decision, a three-member Alberta Court of Appeal panel upheld the conviction of Deborah Belyea in the killing of her husband Alfred, a Cypress County council member, 4½ years ago.
Defence lawyer Jennifer Ruttan had argued trial Justice Dallas Miller made legal errors, including misapprehending the evidence against Belyea, including failing to consider the offender’s health and physical limitations.
Miller found Belyea, now 73, fatally stabbed her 72-year-old husband, who was on sedatives at the time, cut off his arms and transported the body 170 km away to Piapot, Sask.
Ruttan submitted her client’s health “would have prevented her from committing the offences.”
Along with a second-degree murder conviction in the October 2021 killing, Miller found Belyea guilty of causing an indignity to a body.
“The trial judge did consider the evidence (of poor health),” the appeal judges said in their written decision.
They said Miller took into account evidence from Belyea’s daughters that their mother “had largely been housebound,” and “had breathing issues and was also struggling with heart and lung issues.”
But they said the trial judge took into account evidence Belyea was able to disconnect her oxygen tank, walk down the stairs of her house and follow a friend outside to her car to say goodbye days after the husband’s disappearance as well as evidence she was able to move around without her oxygen tank on two other occasions.
“The trial judge concluded the appellant’s health issues did not prevent her from being independently mobile,” they said, in agreeing with Crown prosecutor Tom Spark the convictions should be upheld.
“He did not misapprehend the evidence, which was contradictory to some extent. He drew an inference as he was entitled to do. Having drawn that inference, it was reasonable for the trial judge to conclude that the appellant’s health issues did not raise a reasonable doubt in the context of the evidence as a whole.”
Alfred Belyea was last seen on Oct. 8, 2021, according to statements given by the offender.
His body was found a week later after one of her daughters turned over a letter her mother had written which included a sketch of a map leading to where the victim’s dismembered body was found.
In the letter Belyea wrote: “I needed to be loved and wanted your dad to hold me but he never did anymore.”
The victim’s missing limbs have never been found.
Belyea was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for a minimum 12 years following Miller’s Jan. 27, 2024, verdict.
KMartin@postmedia.com
X: @KMartinCourts
]]>Alberta’s top court has confirmed a lawsuit filed over sexual abuse by an armed forces chaplain can proceed as a class action.
In a written decision released Friday, a three-member Alberta Court of Appeal panel rejected an application by the federal government to overturn the decision to certify Bobbie Bees’ claim as a class action lawsuit.
The government had challenged Calgary Court of King’s Bench Justice Robert Neufeld’s certification on the basis that Bees wasn’t a direct victim of Father Angus McRae at Canadian Forces Base Namao in Edmonton.
Neufeld defined the class of plaintiffs that could proceed with the lawsuit as either victims of sexual abuse by the armed forces captain, or “with his participation, encouragement or facilitation.”
“Canada does not dispute that the claim reveals a potentially viable cause of action against Canada by victims of sexual abuse by McRae while he served as chaplain on Canadian Armed Forces bases,” the appeal judges wrote.
“Canada’s primary objections arise from the fact that Bees, the representative plaintiff and respondent on this appeal, was directly sexually abused by PS (an altar boy and victim of McRae’s), rather than by McRae himself.”
The decision notes Bees lived on CAF bases for most of his childhood and between 1978 and 1980, from the ages of seven to nine, he lived on the Namao base, near Edmonton.
“McRae had been an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces since 1973 and was employed as an armed forces chaplain between 1968 and 1981,” the judges wrote.
“Before being stationed at the Namao base, McRae worked as a chaplain on several other CAF bases.”
McRae, who died in 2011, before Bees filed his claim, was court martialled after facing a Catholic ecclesiastic court in June 1980.
PS, then 14, began babysitting Bees on the recommendation of McRae to the plaintiff’s grandmother and repeatedly sexually assaulted him.
The appeal judges noted Neufeld “considered Canada’s argument that the facts pled in the statement of claim only support a cause of action by Bees against PS, and that the doctrine of vicarious liability cannot extend to impose liability on Canada fort actions taken by a 12 to 14-year-old.”
But Neufeld found Canada could be liable for conduct of McRae which led to abuse.
“He found that McRae may have committed several torts, including assault, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, even if he did not directly sexually abut Bees.”
They agreed with Bees’ lawyer, Adam Bordignon, that actions taken by McRae to facilitate abuse by PS or others could make Canada jointly liable.
In a prepared statement, Bordignon said the ruling was “an important decision for survivors.”
“The decision recognizes the realities of institutional abuse and the broader harms that can flow from systemic failures to protect children living on military bases.”
]]>Calgary murder suspect Paulos Berhe denied Thursday that the fatal shooting of a city man and the wounding of his girlfriend were the result of a robbery attempt by the accused.
During cross-examination of Berhe, Crown prosecutor Peter Mackenzie suggested the accused’s claim he shot Donald Lyons and Amber Beach in self-defence was a fabrication.
Instead, Mackenzie suggested, Berhe never intended to sell Lyons a “half brick” of cocaine for $9,000 but simply wanted to take the cash by force.
Berhe testified he met Lyons in the parking lot of the Portico Lounge in southeast Calgary after arranging to sell him a significant amount of the illicit drug.
He said when he got in Lyons’ pickup he was attacked by Beach with a knife and his purchaser then pulled a revolver and attempted to shoot him.
Mackenzie suggested the truth was Lyons and Beach were victims of a robbery, not the perpetrators of one.
“I’m going to suggest to you at that point you produced your handgun and you shot Amber in the shoulder and you shot Don Lyons in the arm and in the throat to rob them, isn’t that true?” Mackenzie said.
“That’s not true,” Berhe replied.
Berhe, 30, is charged with second-degree murder in the Dec. 18, 2023, fatal shooting of Lyons. He is also accused of discharging a firearm with intent to wound Beach.
On Wednesday, Berhe told a Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury he was in a life and death situation after entering Lyons’ truck for the purpose of handing over the cocaine and receiving the $9,000 payment.
He said the door locks were engaged, trapping him in the back seat before Beach began stabbing him and a blanket was thrown over his head.
When he managed to get the blanket off, Lyons was pointing a handgun at him and twice pulled the trigger, he told defence counsel Allan Fay.
But Mackenzie suggested that version of events was a fabrication on Berhe’s part.
The prosecutor provided a theory that Berhe never brought the drugs to the pickup, instead leaving them with his supplier, known as Bubbles in the drug trade, who was parked nearby.
After shooting the two victims, Berhe fled, but immediately returned to the pickup to retrieve the shell casings from his gun and look for the $9,000 in the console of the vehicle, Mackenzie suggested.
“I’m going to suggest that (Bubbles) was there to back you up in this transaction,” Mackenzie said.
“That’s not true,” Berhe replied.
Jurors will hear final submissions from Mackenzie and Fay next Tuesday before getting final instructions on the law from Justice David Labrenz and beginning their deliberations.
X: @KMartinCourts
]]>Unable to come to a unanimous consensus, jurors in the trial of a Calgary murder suspect were dismissed late Wednesday and a mistrial was declared in the case.
Justice Robert Armstrong determined after receiving a series of questions from the jury that a further exhortation to attempt to get them to reach a verdict would be futile.
The Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury deliberated over parts of three days before indicating they could not reach a verdict in the case.
“We cannot reach a unanimous verdict,” their final note to the court said.
The Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury deliberated over parts of three days before indicating they could not come to a consensus on whether Xu had the necessary intent for murder when he killed his mother, Alice (Jingying) Xu in the early morning hours of June 30, 2023.
The central issue in the case was Xu’s claim he was so high on LSD he couldn’t form the intent to commit murder when he killed his mom near the Foothills Medical Centre.
Defence counsel Dale Fedorchuk had argued jurors should accept his client’s evidence that he was hallucinating and believed his mother was a demon about to consume his soul when he took a large rock and repeatedly struck her in the head.
Xu, 23, testified he consumed two tabs of LSD the previous evening and was having difficulty perceiving reality from fantasy when his parents became concerned he might be overdosing and took him to the hospital.
At one point he left the emergency room and his mother followed him across the street to nearby residences.
It was there, between two houses, that Xu took a rock and killed his mother after she grabbed him by the arm.
“I looked back at her face and it was monstrously deformed in a spiral-like pattern,” he told jurors, comparing what he saw to images in a graphic Japanese horror series called Uzumaki.
“I screamed out loud … I punched where her face should be, she’d fallen over, lost her balance. I kicked her head,” Xu testified.
“I picked up a nearby rock and I struck her head twice and following the second strike, there was a huge amount of blood spatter that shocked me. I dropped the rock, I’d fallen back and I simultaneously thought ‘I just killed her,’ and ‘this could not possibly be real.'”
Xu told Fedorchuk he felt “an immense visceral fear,” when he saw his mother’s distorted face.
“That’s what my mind perceived, like a demonic entity had just come out of nowhere and was going to eat my soul.”
But Crown prosecutor Vicki Faulkner told jurors Xu’s testimony was a made-up story to mask the truth; that he was angry at his mother and killed her.
Faulkner noted Xu confessed to two passing motorists , a 911 operator and the first police officer on the scene that he’d murdered his mother.
She said Xu never told any of them he thought he had killed a demon and he showed no signs of impairment on body cam video from the arresting officer.
At one point on Wednesday afternoon, jurors sent Armstrong a note indicating they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict and needed further guidance.
After the mistrial was declared, Fedorchuk indicated he will be seeking bail for his client, who has remained detained since his arrest shortly after the killing.
A new trial date will be set on May 22.
]]>The fatal shooting of a city man was the result of a drug robbery gone wrong, a Calgary murder suspect admitted Wednesday.
But Paulos Berhe told a Court of King’s Bench jury he was the victim, not the perpetrator of the would-be heist.
He feared for his life, he said, when he wildly pulled the trigger of his concealed handgun after his drug client, Donald Lyons, tried to shoot him over $9,000 worth of crack cocaine.
Berhe, 30, is charged with second-degree murder in the Dec. 18, 2023, death of Lyons and discharging a firearm with intent to wound the deceased’s girlfriend.
He met Lyons, and the dead man’s girlfriend, Amber Beach, when he showed up at the Portico Lounge in southeast Calgary to sell him a half-pound brick (about 226 grams) of the illicit substance.
But he said when he got into the back seat of Lyons’ parked pickup truck he heard the doors lock and Beach and her boyfriend turned towards him and attacked.
“I started getting blows to the chest and my head,” he told defence lawyer Allan Fay, explaining Beach came at him with a knife.
“I seen Amber Beach holding a blade.”
Berhe said he tried to fend off the knife and escape.
“That’s when I tried the door. It didn’t work, I realized I was trapped in the truck,” he said.
Lyons then threw a blanket over his head while Beach continued to assault him, Berhe testified.
“It felt like a hammer was hitting me.”
He managed to pull the blanket off only to face a more serious threat.
“That’s when I seen Lyons putting a handgun to my face,” the accused said.
“What are you thinking?” Fay asked.
“Excuse my language, ‘oh, f—, I’m about to die.'”
Lyons twice pulled the trigger of the revolver, but it failed to discharge.
He began struggling with Lyons for the weapon while Beach continued stabbing him, Berhe said.
“Somehow I managed to put my hand in my pocket and fired my handgun towards their direction,” he said.
At that point Beach exited the front passenger door, which unlocked his door and he fled.
But after moving 10 to 15 steps from Lyons’ truck, Berhe turned around to retrieve his drugs and also took the revolver that had fallen to the floor.
In his opening address to jurors last week, Crown prosecutor Peter Mackenzie called the double shooting a “drug deal gone wrong.”
He said Lyons had arrange to buy an illicit substance from Berhe, but when the accused got in his pickup she shot both victims.
In his opening statement, Fay told jurors his client was acting in self-defence.
“He was attacked by two desperate drug addicts,” Fay said.
“Even drug dealers are entitled to defend themselves.”
]]>Jurors entered day three of deliberations Wednesday in the trial of Calgary murder suspect Alex (Aixin) Xu.
Xu, 23, is charged with second-degree murder in the June 30, 2023, slaying of his mother, Alice (Jingying) Ai.
Jurors began deliberating Xu’s fate Monday afternoon after hearing final submissions from defence counsel Dale Fedorchuk and Crown prosecutor Vicki Faulkner as well as instructions on the law from Court of King’s Bench Justice Robert Armstrong.
The 12-member jury was told they had one issue to consider, whether Xu had the necessary intent to commit murder when he bludgeoned his mother between two homes across the street from Foothills Medical Centre.
Xu had been taken to the hospital in the early morning hours of June 30, 2023, by his parents after he consumed two tabs of LSD the previous evening.
Xu testified he was experiencing a severe reaction to the consumption of the drugs and was having difficulty perceiving reality from fantasy.
At one point he left the emergency room and his mother followed him across the street to nearby residences.
It was there, between two houses, that Xu took a rock and killed his mother after she grabbed him by the arm.
“I looked back at her face and it was monstrously deformed in a spiral-like pattern,” he told jurors, comparing what he saw to images in a graphic Japanese horror serious called Uzumaki.
“I screamed out loud … I punched where her face should be, she’d fallen over, lost her balance. I kicked her head,” Xu testified.
“I picked up a nearby rock and I struck her head twice and following the second strike, there was a huge amount of blood spatter that shocked me. I dropped the rock, I’d fallen back and I simultaneously thought ‘I just killed her,’ and ‘this could not possibly be real.'”
Xu told Fedorchuk he felt “an immense visceral fear,” when he saw his mother’s distorted face.
“That’s what my mind perceived, like a demonic entity had just come out of nowhere and was going to eat my soul.”
Fedorchuk argued that the effect of the drugs made his client incapable of forming the intent to commit murder and he should be convicted of manslaughter.
But Faulkner told jurors Xu’s testimony was a made-up story to mask the truth; that he was angry at his mother and killed her.
]]>The day after Rocky View County employee Colin Hough was fatally shot east of Calgary, a “suspicious character” was spotted on a quad near where a burn pile was later discovered, court heard Tuesday.
Terry Loeppky testified he was alerted to the individual by his son, Chris, who had spotted him off Boundary Road not far from where it intersects with the Trans-Canada Highway.
And Loeppky said after the man on the quad had left he discovered a “burn pile” of items still smouldering, including what looked like a pair of underwear.
In her opening address to jurors last week, Crown prosecutor Photini Papadatou told jurors they will hear evidence murder suspect Elijah Blake Strawberry’s DNA was found on items in the burn pile.
Both Strawberry and Arther Wayne Penner are charged with second-degree murder in connection with the Aug. 6, 2024, fatal shooting of Hough, who had slowed near the intersection of Township Road 250 and Range Road 282 east of Calgary for a burning pickup truck.
Loeppky said the individual he spotted was an Indigenous male with neck tattoos.
“He seemed to be a Native man on the quad with a lot of tattoos on his neck,” he said.
Loeppky said the man was still sitting on the same ATV an hour later when he drove by the location a second time.
He also said he returned to the same location later and the man was gone but there was a small burn pile still flaming.
He said the tattoos looked like the kind you’d get in prison.
“It just seemed like a lifestyle of certain people would likely have that sort of tattoo,” Loeppky said.
“A criminal or a biker.”
In cross-examination, Strawberry’s lawyer, Rebecca Snukal, suggested Loeppky couldn’t be certain the man was Indigenous.
“You were guessing as to his ethnicity,” Snukal said.
“I was pretty sure. How’s that?”
The trial, in its second week, is scheduled to last four weeks.
]]>Rocky View County worker Colin Hough was shot three times after slowing down to investigate a burning stolen pickup truck east of Calgary, a pathologist said Monday.
But only one of the bullets was fatal, Dr. Caylea Foster told a Court of King’s Bench jury.
Foster testified she conducted an autopsy on Hough the day after he was shot at the intersection of Township Road 250 and Range Road 282 east of Calgary.
She told Crown prosecutor Photini Papadatou she found six bullet wounds on Hough’s body, three entry wounds and three exit wounds.
Foster labelled the injuries A to F, but acknowledged during cross-examination that she could not determine the order of the wounds.
But she said the injury she labeled C on its entry and F on its exit was the one that cost Hough his life.
That bullet struck Hough in the left chest, hit the fourth rib on his left side, causing a fracture of that bone, hit the upper lobe of his left chest and “perforated … the sac that surrounds the heart.”
“It struck the right side of the heart and created a large gaping hole,” Foster said.
Charged with second-degree murder in Hough’s Aug. 6, 2024, killing are Elijah Blake Strawberry and Arthur Wayne Penner.
The doctor said the injury to Hough’s heart would have caused massive internal bleeding, with nearly a litre of blood being found in his abdominal cavities.
“That amount of blood, approximately a litre or so, is considered significant. You’re essentially bleeding out into your own cavities,” Foster said.
She said the wound would have caused Hough’s death “on the order of minutes, or less.”
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The pathologist told Papadatou that Hough received two other bullet wounds, neither of which would have been fatal.
One of those struck the right side of Hough’s upper back and exited through his right shoulder, while the other entered his left arm and exited through his chest.
“Mr. Hough’s cause of death was the gunshot wound of the chest.”
During cross-examination by defence lawyers Rebecca Snukal and Alexandra Seaman, the witness agreed she could not determine the intent of the shooter or shooters at the time Hough was injured.
“You cannot say what a shooter was aiming at?” Snukal asked.
“No,” Foster said.
The doctor also agreed not all bullet wounds are fatal.
And she told Seaman Hough may not have immediately collapsed.
“Theoretically the decedent would have been able to run … for a very short period of time,” she said.
]]>Admitted killer Alex (Aixin) Xu was so high on a hallucinogenic drug he was unable to form the intent to commit murder in the death of his mother three years ago, his lawyer said Monday.
But Crown prosecutor Vicki Faulkner argued Xu’s claim — that he thought his mother was a demon about to consume his soul when he bludgeoned her with a large rock — was just a figment of his imagination.
Faulkner said jurors deciding Xu’s fate should convict him of second-degree murder, suggesting his testimony that he was severely intoxicated wasn’t supported by the evidence.
Xu, 23, is charged in connection with the June 30, 2023, killing of Alice (Jingying) Ai.
Defence counsel Dale Fedorchuk said jurors should accept the accused’s evidence he consumed two tabs of LSD the previous evening and began suffering hallucinations that culminated in him killing his mother between two homes across from the Foothills Medical Centre.
“His thoughts split into multiple levels of consciousness,” the lawyer told jurors deciding Xu’s fate.
Fedorchuk said that state continued from the time Xu became high to after his parents took him to the hospital, fearing an overdose.
CCTV footage from the hospital showed Xu leaving emergency with his mother following him in an effort to get him to return.
They eventually ended up between two houses, where Xu took a large rock and repeatedly struck his mom.
At that time his client was perceiving an alternate reality and unable to form the intent to commit murder, said Fedorchuk, in arguing jurors should find his client guilty of a reduced charge of manslaughter.
“When she pulled on his arm he looked at her face. He found it to be monstrously deformed in a spiral pattern,” the lawyer said, in detailing his client’s evidence.
“Alex experienced an immense, visceral fear,” Fedorchuk said.
“His intoxicated mind perceived his mother as a demonic entity that had come out of nowhere and was going to eat his soul.”
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But Faulkner told jurors they should ignore the “story” Xu made up to avoid being held responsible for murder.
She noted Xu often rambled while giving his evidence, unable to stick to his script.
“There are times when the accused clearly loses the main plot of his own story,” Faulkner said.
She said Xu showed no signs of intoxication when he flagged down two separate motorists and confessed to murdering his mother, telling a 911 operator the same thing before police arrived.
Body camera video of his arrest shows Const. Jameel Ali approaching Xu and his father, who had gone to retrieve the family car when the accused and his mom wandered off, and asking, “How are you guys doing.”
Xu’s immediate response to the officer was, “I just murdered my mom,” Faulkner noted.
“The accused is telling the truth when he speaks to all those people. ‘I just murdered my mom.'”
Jurors began deliberating the case Monday afternoon after receiving final instructions from Justice Robert Armstrong.
]]>Recently released high-risk offender Collin Dennis Ayorech will spend the next 18 months under strict conditions to protect the public and assist in his rehabilitation, a judge ordered Monday.
Justice Harry Van Harten agreed to a joint Crown and defence submission to place Ayorech on a Criminal Code peace bond with conditions that include electronic monitoring by Calgary police.
Crown prosecutor Karuna Ramakrishnan told the Calgary Court of Justice judge that Ayorech had been under house arrest since his release from prison in February pending his agreement to enter into the peace bond.
He’ll now be subject to a nightly curfew, as well as other conditions which include no contact with his most recent victim and a ban on drinking and consuming recreational drugs.
Police issued a public warning when Ayorech was released Feb. 6 , after serving all of an eight-year sentence handed him in August 2020, which was reduced to 5½ years due to credit for time served.
Van Harten warned Ayorech that breaching his court-ordered conditions could see him back behind bars, perhaps even at the Kent Institution, where he served more than a year of his penitentiary term.
“It’s a tough place,” Van Harten noted, of the maximum security prison in Agassiz, B.C.
“It is, I got my jaw broken while there,” Ayorech said.
But Van Harten noted part of the justice system is the rehabilitation of offenders.
“It’s part of our criminal justice system not to keep people locked up forever, especially in a place like Kent,” the judge said.
“I’m satisfied and hopeful about your agreement to this order.”
Van Harten said Ayorech will be subject to electronic monitoring by the Calgary Police Service’s High Risk Offender Program.
He was sentenced on charges including aggravated assault for a brutal attack on his then-girlfriend, Dawn Warden, in which he severed three of her fingers before trapping her in a closet and setting her room on fire .
Among the restrictions on Ayorech is that he remain at least 1,000 metres from her.
]]>Alberta RCMP have arrested a British Columbia man suspected of defrauding a victim of over $700,000 by pretending to be an employee of JP Morgan.
Harprit Singh Gill, 47, a resident of Richmond, B.C., has been charged with fraud over $5,000 and laundering the proceeds of the crime.
Three Hills RCMP began investigating in February of last year, according to an RCMP news release shared on Saturday.
The victim had researched online about high interest savings and was contacted by someone claiming to represent JP Morgan, a global financial services firm. The victim was offered a Guaranteed Investment Certificate rate (GIC), and he sent wire transfers in the amount of $500,000 and $230,000 to a beneficiary company, Sunlife Holdings Inc.
In total, the victim was defrauded $729,000.
RCMP determined JP Morgan does not operate as a GIC holder in Canada and that the JP Morgan GIC was a common scam. They investigated the bank account associated with Sunlife Holdings Inc. and discovered the name of the account holder. They also found numerous wire transfers were sent from the account to bank accounts held by financial institutions in Canada and in the U.K.
A national arrest warrant was issued for Gill and on May 6, he was found and arrested in Richmond. He was remanded into custody after a bail hearing and will be transported to Alberta for further court proceedings.
]]>Dash-cam video of fatal shooting victim Colin Hough’s stolen work vehicle failed to help police identify the culprits, a Calgary murder trial heard Friday.
Const. Shane Manca agreed with defence lawyers Rebecca Snukal and Alexandra Seaman that despite capturing the stolen Rocky View County pickup on his in-vehicle camera during a near head-on collision, he wasn’t able see who was inside the truck.
Manca said glare from the windshield prevented police from seeing inside the cab of the pickup.
“Did you observe two occupants in the vehicle?” Seaman asked during cross-examination of the Strathmore Mountie.
“I didn’t observe the occupants,” Manca said.
He told Snukal the video could not be zoomed in, but steps were taken to try to determine the identities of anyone in the truck.
You weren’t able to identify anyone?” Snukal asked.
“Correct,” Manca said.
Video played in court on Thursday, showed Manca’s police pickup travelling westbound on Township Road 252 before coming upon the Rocky View County vehicle Hough’s assailants were reported to have fled in.
Both driver’s side mirrors were damaged as the two pickups narrowly missed colliding head-on at high speeds.
Arthur Wayne Penner and Elijah Blake Strawberry are charged with second-degree murder in connection with the Aug. 6, 2024, fatal shooting of Hough on a rural road east of Calgary.
Manca was also asked about his involvement in investigating the discovery of a mud-caked revolver in an irrigation shed on Aug. 21.
He told Crown prosecutor Ryan Ziegler the shed contained a “makeshift” bed as well as clothing seized by Const. Jihun Kim.
A pair of underwear were also discovered just outside the shed, Manca said.
Police had found Hough’s abandoned truck in a field not far from the shed, Manca said.
The shed was on a farmer’s property “one mile from where the truck was located.”
The trial resumes on Monday.
]]>One of the Mounties pursuing suspects in the fatal shooting of a Rocky View County worker narrowly avoided a head-on collision as he tracked them down, court heard Thursday.
Const. Shane Manca said he was one of several RCMP members who took to the rural roads northeast of Strathmore shortly after Colin Hough was shot and his work truck taken.
And Manca told Crown prosecutor Ryan Ziegler his in-vehicle dash camera caught the close encounter as he sped down Township Road 252 east of Calgary.
The video, played for the Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury hearing the trial of Hough’s alleged killers, shows his police truck being “sideswiped,” Manca said.
Charged with second-degree murder in Hough’s Aug. 6, 2024, death is Elijah Blake Strawberry and Arthur Wayne Penner.
The two men also face a charge of attempted murder in the shooting of a second victim, Matthew Andres, who was working at the intersection of Township Road 250 and Range Road 282 when he was shot in the arm, as well as two counts each of armed robbery.
The video shows Manca driving eastbound on 252 reaching speeds of up to 136 km/h when a white pickup truck approaches.
“As I was approaching a hill I could see a white pickup truck,” Manca told Ziegler.
He said he positioned his police vehicle in the centre of the roadway.
“At the last second they veered off to the side and made contact with my driver’s side mirror,” Manca said, before the video was shown in court.
“That bang was my mirror making contact with his mirror,” the officer said, or a loud noise heard on the video.
Manca wasn’t able to see the occupants of the other vehicle, or identify it as a Rocky View County truck.
But when Ziegler paused the video the moment before the collision the county’s name can be seen on the driver’s-side door.
At that point Manca’s dash cam recording had him driving at 78 km/h.
He continued westbound and met up with Const. Jihun Kim.
About 10 minutes later they got word the truck was found. It was located in a farmer’s field and had been abandoned.
Kim testified he had earlier tried to follow the truck but it disappeared as it drove at speeds up to 170 km/h.
Kim also told court that on Aug. 21, he discovered a mud-caked .45-caliber revolver in an irrigation shed.
Both defence counsel Sarah Kondor and Rebecca Snukal grilled the officer on wearing the same rubber gloves while touching other items in the shed before seizing the gun.
Manca’s testimony continues on Friday.
]]>Despite the vigilante justice inflicted on a gunman in a road-rage case who was viciously beaten after shooting at his victim, a city man must serve time behind bars, a Calgary judge has ruled.
In a written decision released Wednesday by Justice Greg Stirling, the Calgary judge rejected the conditional sentence order defence counsel Jim Lutz had proposed for Ethan El-Khatib.
Instead, the Calgary Court of Justice judge handed El-Khatib a 20-month jail term, reducing what would have been a harsher term by four months for the beating El-Khatib endured.
In sentencing submissions last November, Lutz proposed a sentence to be served in the community because of the vigilante justice inflicted on his client.
El-Khatib pleaded guilty to a Sept. 27, 2023, charge of possession of a loaded, restricted handgun, which he brandished at another vehicle during a road-rage incident.
According to facts presented by Crown prosecutor Margot Engley, El-Khatib fled the scene near the Calgary International Airport, after brandishing the weapon following the exchange or profanities.
But when El-Khatib got stuck in construction traffic, the other motorist, Rayad Hammidi, was able to catch up to him.
At that point the offender fired shots at Hammidi’s car and when the other driver got close to him, shot him once in the head.
The bullet grazed Hammidi’s forehead and he and his passengers then pulled El-Khatib from his car and inflicted a prolonged beating.
“These three individuals don’t just disarm Mr. El-Khatib, they beat him, and they beat him savagely,” Lutz said in seeking a conditional sentence order.
Stirling acknowledged El-Khatib was brutally assaulted, but said crimes involving gun use need to be deterred with stiff sentences.
“The videos of the assault is difficult to watch,” he said.
“At some points, Mr. El-Khatib’s head is repeatedly pulled back and then smashed into the concrete sidewalk.”
But he said the circumstances of the case called for time behind bars.
“It is aggravating the accused had a loaded handgun readily accessible in his car. It is aggravating that Mr. El-Khatib had an overcapacity magazine with 20 bullets and that the serial number was defaced,” Stirling wrote.
“It is aggravating that the accused brandished the handgun at the complainants in the context of a road-rage incident, and it is aggravating the offence occurs on a public roadway at the Calgary Airport in the middle of the afternoon where many members of the public are present.”
Engley dropped a more serious charge of attempted murder, acknowledging El-Khatib may have been acting in self-defence when he shot Hammidi.
]]>Then-CN Rail police officer Rob Anderson believed he had stumbled upon a serious crash when he came upon a rural intersection east of Calgary, he testified Wednesday.
Anderson told Crown prosecutor Photini Papadatou he saw two trucks, one engulfed in flames and a second in a ditch, and a badly injured individual lying in the middle of the road.
And not seeing a potential second driver, Anderson feared a second motorist could be trapped inside the burning pickup.
It wasn’t until Mounties arrived about five minutes later and spoke to an individual who had fled more than a football field from the scene did Anderson discover the grisly truth; he had happened upon a fatal shooting scene which also left another victim injured.
The now constable with the Diamond Valley RCMP, who was working as a rail cop after retiring from the Calgary Police Service, said his confusion about the scene was complicated by the fact he had not been provided with any advanced information, like an officer who was dispatched to the scene would.
He said he approached the individual lying on the roadway, whom he later identified as Rocky View County worker Colin Hough, and attempted to determine his condition.
Anderson said Hough was unconscious and had shallow breathing.
He said he then turned his attention to the nearby burning truck, which he feared was still occupied.
But he told Papadatou as he got as close as he could, before being backed off by the heat of the flames, he couldn’t see anyone inside.
“If there had been someone in that burning vehicle, would you have been able to save them?” the prosecutor asked.
“No, by the time I got close enough to it the heat and the flames were too intense,” Anderson said.
“That was my biggest fear at the time. If there had been somebody in the vehicle, I wasn’t going to be able to get them out. That would’ve been difficult to watch.”
On trial before a Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury are murder suspects Elijah Blake Strawberry and Arthur Wayne Penner.
The two accused are charged with second-degree murder in the Aug. 6, 2024, fatal shooting of Hough and the attempted murder of Fortis Alberta worker Matthew Andres, who was shot in the upper forearm before fleeing.
It’s the prosecution’s theory Strawberry and Penner approached the intersection of Township Road 250 and Range Road 282 with a stolen truck that had a flat tire and tried to rob Andres of his work pickup before it got stuck in the ditch.
When Hough arrived a short time later, with the original stolen truck now engulfed in flames, he was shot and the culprits fled in his work truck.
Meanwhile Andres, who called 911 while still bleeding, was grilled by defence counsel Rebecca Snukal over whether he saw her client Strawberry’s prominent face tattoos.
But Andres said the person who shot him had a toque pulled down over his forehead and his face was covered from his eyes down.
]]>Fortis Alberta worker Matthew Andres described for Calgary jurors Tuesday the harrowing incident two summers ago which saw him ambushed and shot before a second man was fatally wounded.
Taking the witness stand before a Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury, Andres told Crown prosecutor Photini Papadatou he was out doing surveying work when he was approached after a truck with a flat tire pulled up.
“I thought they were going to come over and ask for some sort of assistance,” Andres said, of the Aug. 6 incident just east of Calgary at the intersection of Township Road 250 and Range Road 282.
“I looked up and I saw someone come up and pull a facemask over their face so I didn’t see any face at that point.”
Without warning the individual shot him in the right upper forearm, he said.
“The next thing that happened was I felt the shot go through my arm,” Andres testified.
He said the gunman, who was toting a silver pistol, had exited the passenger side of a white Dodge Ram that had pulled up at the intersection.
“After I felt the shot I turned to look at the individual and yes he did (have a weapon).” the witness said.
“They were pointing it at my head.”
Andres said the gunman told him “keys” and he indicated they were in his still running work truck.
Andres said he got on the ground on his stomach as the assailant twice walked away before returning.
“I thought I was going to die,” he said.
At a certain point he could tell the gunman was moving away and he got up to run.
He managed to get to a ditch some distance away and looked back to see that his truck had been moved, but was now nose down in a ditch.
“Right behind it was the white dodge that was pretty much engulfed in flames.”
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Andres looked for approaching vehicles to seek help and soon after a white GMC pickup came up and slowed down.
“As soon as they slowed down … I saw two figures rush out towards the vehicle and heard shots. Three or four shots.”
Elijah Blake Strawberry and Arthur Wayne Penner face charges of second-degree murder, attempted murder and two counts of armed robbery in connection with the incident.
Andres said after he heard the shots he looked back towards the scene and saw a figure laying on the road and the GMC pickup fleeing the scene northbound.
It was then he called 911, a recording played for jurors in court.
The trial is set for four weeks.
]]>What started out as a flat tire on a stolen truck ended with the fatal shooting of a Rocky View County worker and a second man running for his life, a Calgary jury heard Monday.
Crown prosecutor Photini Papadatou, in her opening address to a Court of King’s Bench jury, detailed the case she intends to present to them in the trial of Elijah Blake Strawberry and Arthur Wayne Penner.
The pair each face an Aug. 6, 2024, charge of second-degree murder in the shooting of would-be Good Samaritan Colin John Hough and the attempted murder of Matthew Andres.
They also face armed robbery charges involving both victims.
Papadatou said Andres, a Fortis Alberta worker, was doing survey work at the intersection of Township Road 250 and Range Road 282 east of Calgary.
“He heard a vehicle approach,” the prosecutor told the 14-member jury.
“He believed it had a flat tire from the sound it was making.”
An individual got out of the white Dodge Ram that pulled up to the intersection and approached Andres, Papadatou said.
“That individual shot Mr. Andres (in the arm) and then demanded the keys to his vehicle,” she said.
She said the person had their face masked and Andres won’t be able to identify him for jurors.
“That individual came back and forth several times and pointed a gun to his head … he feared for his life,” Papadatou said of the Fortis worker.
“He ran to escape,” the prosecutor said.
“He was trying to hide.”
Someone lit the Dodge Ram with the flat tire on fire and Andres then heard another vehicle approaching.
“Mr. Andres could not warn the driver of the other vehicle … He tried, but he could not.”
Hough, driving eastbound in his Rocky View County pickup, arrived on the scene where “he was shot multiple times” while still driving.
A third person arrived on scene and had a dashcam, the prosecutor said.
“His camera recorded a figure moving across the intersection and collapsing … in the middle of the road,” Papadatou said.
The video also captured the victim’s truck “taking off as Mr. Hough was collapsing in the road,” she said.
“A .45 bullet … was found close to where Mr. Hough collapsed.”
By this time the white Dodge Ram was engulfed in flames.
Papadatou said Andres truck, which was initially parked by the side of the road, ended up stuck in a ditch.
Inside, multiple items were found that did not belong to him, including a cellphone and a blue shoe.
“The phone was associated to Mr. Penner and it also contained DNA attributed to Mr. Penner,” she said.
“The blue shoe had DNA attributed both to Mr. Strawberry and Mr. Penner at various areas.”
Police also found a 9mm casing close to where Andres was shot.
“It is the theory of the Crown that it’s Mr. Strawberry who shot Mr. Andres and both these individuals shot Mr. Hough and it’s Mr. Penner who set the vehicle on fire.”
The trial is set for four weeks.
]]>A “drug deal gone wrong” left a Calgary man dead and his wounded girlfriend running for cover, a Calgary jury was told Monday.
In his opening address to a Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury, Crown prosecutor Peter Mackenzie detailed the incident which led to the fatal shooting of Donald Lyons.
Paulos Berhe is charged with second-degree murder and discharging a firearm with intent to wound in connection with the incident.
Mackenzie said Lyons and his girlfriend, Amber Beach, were drinking and using crack cocaine on Dec. 18, 2023, in their Forest Lawn area home when he decided he wanted to go out to meet someone.
The pair drove to the Portico Lounge on 35th Street S.E., the prosecutor told jurors.
“About 9:30 p.m. Don Lyons pulled his truck into the lot in front of the Portico Lounge,” Mackenzie said.
“He left the truck in front of the lounge, got out and went meet someone in front of the lounge.”
The prosecutor said Beach was unaware that Lyons had been texting a contact to make a $9,000 purchase for what was assumed to be crack cocaine or some other illicit substance.
Lyons met an individual dressed in light coloured sweats, a hoody and a dark puffer jacket and the two men returned to Lyons’ truck.
Mackenzie said Lyons got back in the driver’s seat while the unknown individual go in the rear passenger side of the vehicle.
“There is a short introduction and then this individual produces a handgun and shoots Amber Beach first, in the back, and then fires at least two shots at Don Lyons. One passes through Lyons’ throat and exits his neck and kills him.”
Beach then opened the passenger door, rolled out and crawled away, eventually calling 911 after tucking herself under a parked car.
When police arrived they found Lyons hanging head down in the open driver’s side door of his truck.
“It is a drug deal gone wrong where the individual in the hoody armed himself … and shot Amber Beach and Don Lyons over this $9,000 drug transaction,” Mackenzie said.
He said evidence, including phone records and DNA will prove that Berhe shot Lyons with the intent necessary for murder and Beach with the intent to wound, main, disfigure her, or endanger her life.
The trial is scheduled to last three weeks.
]]>The Calgary dad charged with murdering his two young children made a brief first appearance in Court of Justice on Monday.
Defence counsel Clayton Rice asked that the father’s case be adjourned a month while he awaits disclosure.
And Crown prosecutor Cassandra Sampson requested that Justice Michelle Christopher order the man to be detained pending any request for bail, which has to be conducted in Court of King’s Bench.
A publication ban on the children’s identities imposed Friday by a justice of the peace remains in place.
The father, who appeared via closed-circuit TV from the Calgary Remand Centre, did not address the court other than to say he understood his lawyer was adjourning the case so he could seek initial disclosure from the prosecution.
A Crown lawyer had not yet been assigned to handle the case by the time his court appearance ended.
Rice told Christopher he has been retained to represent the accused, who faces two charges of first-degree murder in the deaths of a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl found dead in a vehicle in the 4500 block of 14th Street N.W. last Thursday morning.
The charge lists the alleged murders as having occurred the previous day.
“This is the first appearance on this matter and (the accused) is in the remand centre,” Rice said when the matter was called first-thing in docket court.
“I have a designation (of counsel) signed, but not yet filed,” Rice said.
The document, once filed with the court, will permit the lawyer to appear on non-contentious matters without the accused being present.
“We’re requesting some time to obtain and review initial disclosure,” Rice told Christopher, in asking the case to be adjourned to June 5.
Outside court, Rice declined to comment at such an early stage in the proceedings.
A temporary memorial honouring the slain children has been set up outside the District 3 police station in northwest Calgary, near where the vehicle was found last week.
The memorial included stuffed animals, a soccer ball and handwritten notes paying tribute to the victims.
“Calgary is mourning,” read one note inscribed on a ribbon attached to a stuffed animal.
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]]>Calling a serial rabbit killers crimes vile, repugnant, shocking and inconceivable, a Calgary prosecutor on Thursday called for a 10-year prison term for the offender.
But the lawyer for Nicholas Weseen, who was convicted by a jury last June of 12 charges of animal cruelty , said a conditional sentence, which would be served in the community, would be a suitable punishment for the city man.
Defence counsel Obehi Ekatah said if Justice Michel Bourque feels jail is required, then a total sentence of 30 months, minus credit for the time Weseen has spent on remand since his conviction, would be more appropriate.
Crown lawyer Rose Greenwood said a conditional sentence would fly in the face of how the Alberta Court of Appeal has said such crimes should be punished.
“The defence position of a conditional sentence order (CSO), respectfully, does not follow the Alberta Court of Appeal direction,” Greenwood told the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge.
“A CSO is not available for these types of crimes … for brutal, violent attacks on animals.”
Weseen was convicted last June 28, of torturing and killing more than a dozen rabbits, including three found in a storage room in Weseen’s Forest Lawn basement suite and two others discovered in the trash behind his residence.
In a police interview following his Jan. 22, 2023, arrest, Weseen said hurting the animals was “kinda like playing God.”
He also said it was like somebody else took over his body.
“It literally feels like there’s a second person in control,” he told Det. Mark Weir.
Before making her sentencing submissions, Greenwood read in victim impact statements from Calgary Humane Society investigator Brad Nichols, police Det. Keeley Grier and Weseen’s former girlfriend, Amy Miko, who raised the alarm about his activities.
Nichols said animal cruelty cases are upsetting to members of the community.
“Intentional violent and tortuous treatment of animals horrifies that community,” he wrote.
“Animal cruelty is a precursor and indicator of interpersonal violence.”
Miko said finding out about Weseen’s true character shattered their nine-year relationship and has left her living in fear.
“Even as this case moves towards a conclusion, the anxiety remains: Will I be safe when he is released? Will he seek vengeance for my cooperation with the police?”
But in an apology letter read in by Ekatah, Weseen said he felt horrible for what he did and described Miko as the most important person in his life.
“I hope in time she can forgive me for what I’ve done,” he wrote.
Weseen also took time to address the courtroom in person after the lawyers completed their sentencing submissions.
“I’ve lost everything I loved, cherished, worked too hard for,” he said.
“I know what I’ve done and I hate myself for it. I have nightmares about what I’ve done.”
Bourque will hand down his sentencing decision on May 29.
Weseen, who was ordered detained after the jury’s verdict, remains in custody pending the judge’s ruling.
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]]>Students allegedly abused by two teachers at John Ware School will receive between $24,000 and $422,000 as part of a settlement agreement, court heard Wednesday.
Lawyer David Corrigan told Justice Michele Hollins that eight different victim groups had been identified for payment under the class-action lawsuit filed over abuse allegations involving teachers Fred Henry Archer and Michael Gregory.
The lawyer said an electronic version of the settlement amounts would be sent to the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge’s office for her signature, as Hollins had to appear remotely from Medicine Hat.
He said 54 former students in those eight groups would receive their payments in the coming days, totalling $10,707,500 as part of the settlement deal reached with the Calgary Board of Education.
Corrigan said a 55th student, who applied to join the class-action on time but hadn’t complied with subsequent steps, has been given until May 26 to complete that process if they wish to claim damages of $24,000.
“We’ve taken all the steps to finalize this matter,” Corrigan said.
The original class-action lawsuit alleged both Archer and the late Gregory, who both taught at John Ware, were involved in abuse of students there between 1988 and 1994.
The case included three named plaintiffs, each of whom represented separate subclasses of victims alleging sexual and physical assault by Archer, physical abuse by Gregory and sexual abuse by that educator, who took his own life days after criminal charges were laid against him .
Last November, the CBE apologized for the hardship experienced by the victims and the effect of that harm.
A dozen of the class members will receive the maximum payment of $422,000, Corrigan said.
]]>Calgarian Duane Nepoose is a “bomb waiting to go off,” a prosecutor said Wednesday, in seeking up to 10½ years in prison on multiple charges, the most serious of which is dangerous driving causing death.
Crown lawyer Todd Buziak, citing a psychiatric assessment of Nepoose, noted he was deemed to be a high risk to reoffend and has failed earlier attempts at substance abuse rehabilitation.
“Mr. Nepoose’s current risk of future violent behaviour is high,” Buziak told Justice Indra Maharaj, in proposing a sentence in the 9½- to 10½-year range.
The prosecutor noted Nepoose’s criminal past included violent crimes committed for a purpose, such as drug debt collecting, and reactive violence.
“We’re dealing with an individual who is, as far as society is concerned, a bomb waiting to go off,” Buziak said.
Nepoose, 31, pleaded guilty to multiple charges last June in connection with a Boxing Day 2024 crime spree that ended in him running a red light at high speed, colliding with two other vehicles and killing nine-year-old Victoria Desjardins.
Nepoose also admitted causing bodily harm to the girl’s mother and older sister, as well as another motorist, while running a red light on northbound Macleod Trail at Southland Drive.
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Shocking video of Nepoose driving at high speeds on multiple streets in the city’s south, captured on video from the HAWCS police helicopter in a stolen van, was played in court at the time of his pleas.
HAWCS tracked the van as it drove on several major roadways, at one time accelerating to approximately 170 km/h, Buziak said, reading from a statement of agreed facts.
The video captured Nepoose eventually heading northbound on Macleod Trail, running red lights at 109th Avenue and 99th Avenue, before striking the silver Pontiac Vibe being driven by Victoria’s mother, Amanda Reitmeier.
Family members deliver victim impact statements
Maharaj also heard about a dozen victim impact statements from family and friends of the dead girl, including from her mother and sister.
Reitmeier told court they were heading to an appointment for Madison that day, one Victoria didn’t want to tag along for.
“What hurts the most is that she didn’t want go with me that day,” the still grieving mom said through tears.
“She wanted to stay at home and build her Lego she got for Christmas.”
Reitmeier said she feels guilt over her daughter’s death.
“It left like it was my fault,” she said.
She said returning to their family home after recovering from her own injuries was difficult.
“Now the home felt so cold. People were there, but there was no noise, no laughter.”
Madison Desjardins, in a statement read in by her aunt, said life without her “best friend” is not the same.
“I used to hear the birds sing, or the butterflies flapping their wings,” she said.
“There was laughing and running. Now I can’t hear the birds … or the butterflies flapping their wings.”
Maharaj will hear sentencing submissions from defence lawyers Sam Taylor and Rebecca Snukal at a later date.
]]>When Uber driver Shaneef Virani was approached by a bloodied “crazy guy in the middle of the street,” he dared not take his eyes off him, he told a Calgary murder trial Tuesday.
“He was all bloodied,” Virani told Crown prosecutor Vicki Faulkner.
“I just asked him, you know, what can I help you with and he said ‘I just killed my mom, please call 911,'” Virani testified.
Virani said the man first approached him waving his arms, leading him to believe it was the fare that had ordered a ride from Foothills Medical Centre emergency.
“I presumed that is the person I’m picking up, obviously not,” the witness said.
“His hands were bloodied.”
Virani said he “locked the door, left it in drive, one foot on the brake the other on the accelerator.”
“I did not know what he was capable of doing or what happened,” Virani said.
“He asked me to call 911, ‘I just killed my mom,’ and he was pointing toward the houses on the east side of Foothills, but I did not look there, my eyes were totally focused on him.”
Virani indicated he would call emergency services after dealing with his fare.
When he made the pick up he took a different route out of the hospital complex, explaining to his fare there was “a crazy guy in the middle of the street.”
CCTV footage from the hospital showed Virani’s white minivan pull up to an intersection on the east side of the hospital at 3:17 a.m. on June 30, 2023.
A man, whom the Crown has told jurors is accused murderer Alex (Aixin) Xu, calmly walks down the middle of 29th Street N.W. and up to the driver’s side door of the witness’s vehicle.
Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Dale Fedorchuk, the witness agreed the man did not appear to be pointing to the east while confessing to killing his mother.
Xu, 23, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Alice (Jingying) Ai. In his opening address Monday to the Calgary Court of King’s Bench jury hearing the case co-prosecutor Paul Marcellus said Xu bludgeoned his mother to death with a boulder between two homes on 29th Street shortly before his encounter with Virani.
Meanwhile, jurors were briefly shown a series of grisly crime scene photographs of Ai’s lifeless body.
Before Const. Ryan Wood entered the photographs as exhibits, Justice Robert Armstrong warned jurors they were about to see disturbing images, and to not let that influence their deliberations.
The trial is set for five weeks, but isn’t expected to take that long.
]]>Jurors set to hear the murder trial of a Calgary man were dismissed Monday as the accused pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter.
Crown and defence lawyers put in just brief facts before the sentencing hearing of Hans Jimenez Varela was adjourned.
The accused pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection with the fatal stabbing of his friend, Jose Gutierrez Polanco more than two years ago.
The body of Gutierrez Polanco was discovered in a residence in the 300 block of Grier Avenue N.E. on Feb. 14, 2024, more than two weeks after he was slain.
Jimenez Varela was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in connection with the killing, believed to have occurred on Jan. 28, 2024, after police indicated they scoured hours of CCTV footage and canvassed the neighbourhood.
Prosecutor Terry Mazerolle told Justice Christopher Simard that he and defence counsel Jason Wuttunee will not be presenting a joint submission on sentencing when that occurs.
Wuttunee asked the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge to adjourn the case to criminal appearance court this Friday in order for he and Mazerolle to determine how long the sentencing hearing might take.
The lawyer said it’s possible they will require two days to make submissions on a suitable punishment for Jimenez Varela.
He was scheduled to face a two-week jury trial, but after Wuttunee indicated his client would be entering a guilty plea the 14 jurors selected last Thursday to hear the case were dismissed.
Although no statement of agreed facts was entered, Wuttunee put on the record enough details to satisfy Simard that he could take the guilty plea.
“We will admit on the record that Mr. Jimenez Varela unlawfully caused the death of the complainant on the offence date,” the lawyer said.
He said the unlawful act was an assault with a weapon, a pair of scissors.
“He agrees he unlawfully assaulted the victim with a pair of scissors?” Simard asked.
“Correct,” Wuttunee said.
Mazerolle added: “The bodily harm resulted from 12 stab wounds.”
Wuttunee also indicated the offender’s ability to form the intent to commit murder was impacted by alcohol consumption.
“Mr. Jimenez Varela … was grossly intoxicated at the time of the offence,” he said.
Simard found those limited facts enough for him to make a finding of guilt on a manslaughter charge.
“The do satisfy all the elements of manslaughter in this case,” the judge said.
Jimenez Varela remains in custody pending his sentencing hearing.
]]>Plunging a sword into the chest of his roommate during a dispute over loud music has landed a confessed Calgary killer an eight-year prison term.
But due to time already served over the course of two separate trials, Michael Elendu will have a mere 76 days of custody left to serve.
Justice Nancy Dilts on Friday accepted a joint recommendation Friday by Crown and defence lawyers to hand Elendu an eight-year term for manslaughter in the death of Kyreese Wright more than five years ago.
Dilts also agreed with prosecutor Samina Dhalla and defence counsel Michael Bates to order Elendu to serve one year of probation, during which he is to get counselling, including for anger management.
The Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge convicted Elendu of a reduced charge of manslaughter in February during his retrial on a charge of second-degree murder in Wright’s Dec. 16, 2020, killing.
Dispute over loud music led to stabbing
The two men got into an argument when Wright complained about the volume of music playing while the killer and another roommate cleaned up their Panorama Hills home.
Before agreeing to the joint sentencing recommendation from Bates and Dhalla, Dilts heard victim impact statements from three relatives of the deceased, including his mom, Alison Halicki.
Halicki said she bears no anger towards Elendu, despite the last five years of her life being “an ebb and flow of emotion.”
“I don’t carry any anger. I only have love moving forward … because love always wins,” she said.
The court also heard from Elendu.
“I just want to apologize to Kyreese’s family,” he said, addressing Halicki in the courtroom gallery.
“I understand that apologizing does not bring him back.”
Elendu acknowledged depriving the victims of “such an amazing friend and amazing brother.”
“I just pray that some day you guys will find peace,” he said.
“Thank you for that,” Halicki replied.
In accepting the joint sentence proposed, Dilts called Wright’s death “a devastating tragedy.”
“This has been a long and difficult journey for the family and friends of Mr. Wright … and no doubt a taxing process for Mr. Elendu and his family,” she said.
Dilts noted the argument between Wright and Elendu escalated quickly, with both threatening the other, and Elendu retrieving his sword while the deceased went to a roommate’s basement bedroom where he asked for a gun.
While Elendu stood outside the locked bedroom door asking the other roommate not to provide a gun, Wright quickly opened the door.
“What happened next was swift and tragic,” Dilts said.
She convicted Elendu of the reduced charge finding he did not have the intent to cause the victim grievous harm and instead reacted “reflexively” to Wright emerging from the bedroom.
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