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Red Deer Advocate WEDNESDAY, FEB. 17, 2016
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Murder of mother of three admitted TRIAL ON CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY OF ADOPTED SON OF FORMER EDMONTON POLICE CHIEF BY PAUL COWLEY ADVOCATE STAFF Mark Damien Lindsay has admitted to the gruesome killing of Dana Turner in 2011. The trial began in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench on Tuesday to determine whether the Edmonton man, who suffers mental health issues, should be held criminally responsible. Lindsay, 29, is charged with second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and interfering with human remains. In an agreed statement of facts read by Crown prosecutor Ed Ring the court heard that Lindsay contacted Turner, with whom he had an on-again, off-again relationship, shortly after he was released from prison on Aug. 12, 2011. He had served a 50-day sentence for stabbing Turner in the head with a paring knife in June, 2011.
Lindsay contacted Turner, 31, a day after his release and by Aug. 14 they had met up again, booking a room at an Edmonton hotel. The two were in her rental car on the morning of Aug. 15 when he stabbed her with a pencil, first in one eye, then the other. He then strangled her with his shoelaces. Lindsay drove to a construction site where he ran over her body twice to make sure she was dead. Lindsay, who is the adopted son of former Edmonton police chief John Lindsay, later drove south and disposed of Turner’s body off an oil lease road about eight km west of Innisfail. The remains of the mother of three boys were not found until October. At the scene was found a work glove that had traces of Turner’s and Lindsay’s DNA. Turner’s mother Wendy Yurko was among about a dozen friends and family of the victim who came to court. Yurko said the justice system failed her daughter.
“My daughter, if she had received justice the first time he drove a knife into her head, he wouldn’t have been released in 50 days, giving us four hours notice, and my daughter would now be alive,” she said outside court. “The only thing that can possibly happen is that someone might be able to stop him from doing this to someone else.” Yurko said the criminal justice system offers justice only to criminals, not their victims. She believes Lindsay deserves to die the same way her daughter did. At the very least, given Canada has no capital punishment, he should be locked up for as long as he lives. Someone as dangerous as Lindsay should never have been released from Edmonton’s Alberta Hospital, where he was being treated for his mental problems, in the first place, she said.
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PROVINCIAL SUBSIDY PROGRAM
Energy Minister tours Nova’s Joffre site MEETS WITH LOCAL BUSINESS REPRESENTATIVES BY MARY-ANN BARR ADVOCATE STAFF
had snow rammed down my throat and down my mouth. I coughed up and spit out all the snow.” He said the slide continued and he went over a cliff. “As the slide continued down, it started to slow down,” said Wyatt. “Right when it started to slow I got lifted up from the bottom. I remember just being pushed up. Things got brighter and brighter above me. I was on my back so I could see clearly and got more and more light. At the last minute as things came to a stop, I took a deep breath to try and expand my lungs because I knew it was compressing me and I wanted to make sure I had room to move my chest so I could breathe. As I took that last breath I pushed my right hand in front of me and miraculously I was on the surface.” Wyatt said he had not choice but to stay calm and focused to stay alive. He has about 20 years of backcountry skiing experience and has taken avalanche training courses. “You had to keep your head,” he said. “You are at the mercy of the snow. You had no choice. It was go with the flow or fight it and run out of oxygen.” Once he stopped, he used his hand to signal for help. His tour leader skied down and dug him out of the snow. Soon he learned there were two others that were buried. Wyatt said he was the worst off between the three of them. The other skiers used beacons to locate the buried skiers.
Energy Minister Margaret McCuaig-Boyd said Tuesday there has been lots of interest in the province’s new $500-million subsidy program for companies building new petrochemical plants in Alberta. Fresh off a visit to Nova Chemicals Corp.’s Joffre site on Tuesday, the minister was in Red Deer on her first official meeting. She met with business representatives from the Red Deer and District Chamber of Commerce and also toured a few oilpatch service industries in the area. The Petrochemicals Diversification Program announced Feb. 1 would apply to companies building new plants that would use methane or propane as raw energy resources to create value-added products such as plastics and fertilizers. The companies would be able to trade or sell royalty credits to oil and gas producers, which in turn would be able to reduce their royalty payments to the province. Nova Chemicals, presently undergoing a $1-billion expansion, uses ethylene as its primary feedstock to produce polyethylene, a value-added product used to make things like bottle caps, food packaging, containers and toys. “We’ve been getting quite a bit of interest, so we’ll see what turns into applications,” McCuaig-Boyd said. “We had identified at least eight to 10 companies that may be interested, and I know there’s companies beyond that have been contacting our department to get more information. I think we’re going to get good competition out of this project.” The province is expecting to see two or three new plants — $3 billion to $5 billion in investment — that would create up to 3,000 construction jobs and about 1,000 full-time jobs. The royalty credit would be over a 10-year period. Approvals are expected to come in April. Work on the new plants could start later this year. McCuaig-Boyd said Nova Chemicals’ Joffre operations are a great example of Alberta diversification. “It’s a pretty optimistic story out there. They certainly put a lot back into the economy locally here, and really, in Alberta and Canada.” She said she is quite interested in the petrochemicals industry, any kind of business that doesn’t experience the ups and downs like other sectors. The minister said what she was hearing in Red Deer is similar to all of Alberta. “People are concerned about the price of oil. When are we going to recover? “We all have concerns about Albertans out of work.”
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Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff
Todd Wyatt underwent surgery at the Mineral Springs Hospital in Banff to repair a badly broken and dislocated ankle over the weekend after being swept up in an Avalanche during a backcounty skiing accident last Friday. Wyatt of Lacombe, was skiing into the Alpine Club of Canada’s Bow Hut located just east of the Wapta Icefield near the Icefields Parkway north of Lake Louise when the avalanche struck. Wyatt and two other skiers from Red Deer’s Parkland Ski Club were knocked down and carried away in the slide which buried each of them.
Lacombe man survives avalanche, night trapped on a mountain BY CRYSTAL RHYNO ADVOCATE STAFF Lacombe’s Todd Wyatt is lucky to be alive. Wyatt was a part of group of eight skiers from Red Deer’s Parkland Ski Club who were backcountry skiing in Banff National Park when they were swept up in an avalanche last weekend. “It was one of the most traumatic things you have gone through whether you were buried or not,” said Wyatt on Tuesday. “It was not fun.” Wyatt remembers every detail of the horrifying experience. It was around 4:45 p.m. on Feb.12 when the skiers, who were scattered, were coming out of the valley on its way to the Alpine Club of Canada’s Bow Hut near Lake Louise. “I heard what sounded like a gunshot,” said Wyatt. “It was a just a loud crack. I looked up and I saw the snow drop. The snow dropped and I just thought this is not happening. Time just stopped for a second. I was right in the line of fire. I tried to turn my skis and try to get turned around to get a bit of a turn. It was on me before I even had a chance to move. I got maybe two steps.” Wyatt said it dropped from underneath him and took his right leg and swept it from underneath as the snow bowed him over. Wyatt screamed as he fell because he knew his leg had just “snapped.” “I yelled as I fell into the snow,” said Wyatt. “I
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Powerhouses put freeze on oil output Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia pledge to cap crude output. If others do the same. Story on Page B1.
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