Jury finds Kelvin High School stabber guilty of manslaughter

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This article was published 09/11/2017 (2908 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 20-year-old man has been convicted of manslaughter for fatally stabbing a former Kelvin High School student during a lunch hour fight.

An eight-woman, four-man Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench jury made the verdict on Thursday night after deliberating about eight hours.

The jury found the man – who can’t be named because he was 17 at the time of the June 2015 stabbing – not guilty of second-degree murder.

Justice Brenda Keyser put the sentencing of the man over to February to allow time for pre-sentence reports to be produced.

Keyser dismissed a request by Crown prosecutors to have the man incarcerated until his sentencing because he hadn’t violated any of his bail conditions in the year and a half since he got out.

Crown attorney Erika Dolcetti said after the jury made its decision “it was a just verdict.”

Earlier, the accused testified he only rushed in and stabbed 17-year-old Brett Bourne because he was scared Bourne would kill one of his friends.

The man said he only had the knife for self defence.

Numerous witnesses testified Bourne was cycling past the school when he saw the other teen who had been dating his ex-girlfriend but, unknown to him, had broken up with her days before.

They said Bourne tried to start a fight and chased him into the school itself before Bourne was stabbed in the chest, dying of the wound which damaged his heart.

During final arguments, defence counsel Greg Brodsky urged the jury not to jump to conclusions before making a verdict.

“The issue will be, for you, not did he make the correct choice, but was the choice that he made reasonable in the circumstances?

“You have to decide whether it was intentional or reflexive, the action. He did what was necessary in order to protect his friend.”

Kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca