Teen killer weeps at hearing in Brandon

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/06/2010 (5566 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — A teen who shot his adoptive mom and sister broke down and wept in court Monday when asked to recall killing his five-year-old sister.

The 17-year-old slumped over in the witness box and sobbed as Crown attorney Jim Ross began to describe the girl’s wounds.

Following court, a relative of the victims said it was about time the killer showed some emotion — her family still struggles with their feelings years later.

“The emotions that he showed are what we feel every day,” she said. “It’s been three years but that’s what we feel every single day.”

The youth’s tears came on Day Three of his sentencing hearing in Brandon Court of Queen’s Bench. He has pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder for the Aug. 24, 2007, shootings at the family home near St. Lazare.

He was 14 years old at the time, and the hearing before Justice Robert Cummings will determine whether he’s to be sentenced as a youth or an adult.

He took the stand, claiming he shot his adoptive mother after suffering years of abuse.

When he was younger, he was hit daily, he said. His mom would hit and kick him, sometimes striking him with a slipper, a belt or TV cable cords.

When he was 11 or 12 years old, she’d held a knife to his throat and on another occasion burned his leg with a cigarette, he said.
He said he never fought back, but snapped the day of the shootings.

“I thought I couldn’t take it any more.”

His mom was scolding him for not doing his yard work properly and dragged him by his hair, called him a liar, threatened to send him back to Child and Family Services and began to hit him.

He said he crawled to his parents’ bedroom and, while barring the door with his feet, managed to grab the .22 rifle from under the bed, reached into a dresser drawer for ammunition and loaded the gun.

He said his mom then flung the door open but ran for the kitchen after she spotted the rifle. He was afraid she was going to grab a knife, he said, and “That’s when it happened.”

While his sister was in the home at the time, the teen never mentioned shooting her during questioning by his lawyer, Bob Harrison.
However, he broke down when Ross described how the boy had shot the girl four times, twice in the head.

When pressed by Ross for a reason why he’d shot the five-year-old, the youth couldn’t explain. He said he didn’t mean to and it was only a short time later that he realized what he’d done.

Ross also pointed to numerous inconsistencies in the teen’s account of the shooting.

He questioned how he managed to bar the bedroom door with his feet, while lying or sitting down, yet still managed to reach blindly into a drawer to find ammunition and load the gun with 14 rounds without dropping a shell.

Ross also wondered how the mother had been shot in the side of her head — three times — if she was shot with her back to the youth while running away.

And despite the teen’s assertion he was struck by his mom numerous times, there were no bruises in the photos police took of him two days later.

His father also previously testified that he saw no evidence that his wife abused his son, and her sisters said they’d never seen her strike her boy.

The hearing continues today.

— Brandon Sun