Wednesday, August 14, 2019 | Your community newspaper since 1916
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Gate making Barry Schaefer welds up a gate for the blacksmithing display in heritage lane at the BCNE. This years fair opens on Thursday at the exhibition grounds.
Sentencing options presented in Mackenzie manslaughter case Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca What to do with a son who beat his father to death and hid the body in the backyard shed of a Mackenzie home was the focus of a sentencing hearing on Tuesday. He has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and causing indignity to a body from the August 2014 incident. Because he committed the offence when he was 17 years old, he is being sentenced under the Youth Criminal Justice Act and his name is protected by a publication ban. According to an agreed statement of facts based largely on statements the son provided, in May 2014 he showed up unannounced at the door of his father’s home in a trailer court in the community of about 3,800 people north of Prince George, after traveling from his mother’s home in Alberta. However, his father had fallen on hard times. His trailer was dilapidated, there was little food in the home and his power was eventually cut off because he had not paid his hydro bill. As well, both were consuming marijuana and crack cocaine, the court was told. As the days followed, they began to bicker, get into yelling matches and into physical fights. Matters reached the boiling when, on the day of the incident, the two once again got into an argument and the son told the father he was going to kill him. While the father armed himself with a machete that had been mounted on a wall and the son got hold of a wooden club that had been sitting on top of a freezer in
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the same room. When the father moved towards the son in what the latter thought was a threatening gesture, he took a swing at the older man. Still perceiving his father to be advancing, he continued to hit his father with the club. Suffering from blows to his head, the father fell to his knees and dropped the machete. Seeing his father bleeding heavily from his head and appearing unconscious and not breathing, the son tried to administer some first aid including mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for what he thought was about a half hour. However, at no time did he seek help from anyone else. When his father did not revive, the son dragged him into the bedroom, put him on the bed and used zap straps to bind his hands and ankles out of fear he would be attacked again. He went to sleep on the living room sofa and when he went to check on his father the next morning, found that he had died. In a state of panic, he wrapped the body, secured it with more zap straps and then, under the cover of nightfall, stood him up in the backyard shed, surrounded him with other objects and screwed the shed door shut. In the days that followed, he spent some of his time smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol while also cleaning the house of evidence and telling the neighbours his father had gone to work. He also bought a tent, stole some food from a local gas station and went camping at a nearby reservoir for about three days. When police showed up at the door looking for his father, he provided a photo album. But the
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RCMP returned and while the son waited at a neighbour’s home, they conducted a search. When they found the body, police went to the neighbour to make an arrest, but the son slipped away and ran for about 10 kilometres to a lake where he hid. The next day, however, he was back in town where one of the officers recognized him and made the arrest. Although he was not in a state of psychosis at the time of the incident, he has been diagnosed with a mental health issue that requires medication. As a consequence, both Crown and defence counsels agree he qualifies for a “therapeutic sentencing option” available under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Called an Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision order, it is for those suffering from a mental illness, psychological disorder or an emotional disturbance and have been convicted of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter or aggravated sexual assault. Crown is seeking an order lasting three years with two of them served in jail and one under close supervision. In contrast, defence counsel Jason LeBlond argued the entire term should served in the community. For more than five years, his client has been living in a group home where he has been receiving the supports he did not get previously and has posed no trouble, he noted. Putting him in a jail would only “disrupt a long pattern of success,” LeBlond contended. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ron Tindale will issue a decision at a later date.
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B.C. Corrections looks at how to prevent contraband drops by drones Jennifer SALTMAN Vancouver Sun Smugglers are taking to the air and using drones to get past walls and fences to deliver drugs, cellphones and other contraband to inmates at correctional centres. That is why B.C. Corrections is gathering information about ways it can use technology to protect its 10 provincial institutions from drones. While drones are not yet “a significant concern,” as they are in other jurisdictions, the agency says it is always looking for ways to respond to potential new threats. “To this end, B.C. Corrections is currently consulting with security advisors on drone detection options,” the service said in an email. B.C. Corrections would not provide data about drone-related incidents at its facilities “due to security.” In a request for information that closed on Monday, Corrections B.C. noted that the drone industry has grown over the years, and there is potential for the devices to be used for surveillance and smuggling contraband. For that reason, it is interested in technology that can detect drones in use, within and around one kilometre from its jails. The agency is looking to find out the level of market interest, get information about new technologies and ap-
proaches to drone detection, and get cost estimates. The type of detection equipment it hopes to use has not been determined, however some common ways to detect drones include cameras and sensors that detect the sound of a drone or pick up its radio frequency. B.C. Corrections is not the first agency to look at drone detection, which is common in the U.S., where contraband smuggling by drones is a bigger problem. The Correctional Service of Canada, which oversees 43 federal institutions across the country, including nine in B.C., will spend $6-million over the next three years on a pilot of its drone detection program at six institutions. “Several incidents within the last few years have revealed that there is an emerging potential vector for introducing contraband to an institution created by small commercially available drones,” said CSC spokesperson Véronique Vallée. — see RECKLESS, page 3
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B.C. Corrections is not the first agency to look at drone detection, which is common in the U.S., where contraband smuggling by drones is a bigger problem.
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