Three years for killing best friend

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This article was published 22/09/2017 (3120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The father of a St. Theresa Point man who died after he was drunkenly beaten by two of his best friends says he doesn’t understand the justice system after the second of two accused got a three-year sentence for manslaughter on Friday.

“I’m speechless,” Joseph Dennis Flett said. “I don’t get the system.”

His son, 26-year-old Rusty Flett, died in April 2016 after two of his friends turned on him following a gathering at Flett’s home that allegedly ended with allegations Rusty had assaulted his wife. Those present had been drinking hard liquor and a potent homebrew known as “super juice,” and “this would never have happened but for the drinking that went on by everyone involved,” provincial court Judge Ken Champagne said as he sentenced 28-year-old Morgan Johnson Wood.

Wood had punched Rusty Flett once in the head after finding out Flett had hit his wife. Wood and his wife had long been friends with the other couple.

Wood’s wife, upon seeing her friend crying with a bloody nose, got angry with Flett and shoved him. Wood threw the punch believing Flett had hurt both women. Flett fell to the floor and another friend, John Jacob Harper, began kicking him.

Flett got up, apologized to his friends, told them he deserved it and went to bed. He was found unresponsive the next day and later died of a brain injury caused by blunt force trauma to the head.

Wood and Harper were charged with manslaughter and both pleaded guilty in court, apologizing to Flett’s family in separate court appearances.

Wood’s defence lawyer, Gerri Wiebe, said even though medical evidence showed the punch likely didn’t cause the death, her client never applied for bail out of respect for Flett’s family, who didn’t want to see him back in the Island Lake community some 465 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

It was important to him, she said, to take responsibility for what he did. Wood had no criminal record — unlike Harper, who was sentenced this spring to five years in prison.

After Wood’s sentencing, which several of Flett’s family members attended in Winnipeg, Joseph Dennis Flett said he understood drinking was to blame, but he’s still left wanting answers.

“What kind of friend would do that to his best friend?” he said, questioning what he said he considers to be a too-lenient sentence for manslaughter.

Champagne described Rusty Flett’s death as a “tragic and senseless loss” and said he hopes the community of St. Theresa Point comes together to support Flett’s family, including his four young children, as well as the men who took responsibility for his death.

“Although Morgan Wood and John Jacob Harper were responsible for the death of Rusty Flett, they never meant to kill him,” he said on Friday.

“Had Rusty Flett been able to overcome his injury, had he woken up that morning and continued on with his day, I suspect that Morgan Wood and John Jacob Harper would never have been charged with anything,” Champagne said. “(Flett) was caught assaulting his wife and the wife of Mr. Wood and he simply said, ‘I was wrong and I deserve this.’ He didn’t mean he deserved to die.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca