Life in prison for stabbing death

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This article was published 22/12/2020 (1895 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A WINNIPEG man has been sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for at least 10 years, after admitting to killing another man in a drug-induced rage inside a Middle Gate home early this year.

Jordan Bonwick’s relatively early guilty plea to second-degree murder shows “a desire to resolve this as expeditiously as possible,” defence lawyer Brett Gladstone told Queen’s Bench Justice Robert Dewar at a sentencing hearing last week.

“Agreeing to plead guilty to a life sentence is no trifling thing,” Gladstone said.

Court heard Bonwick, 26, his ex-girlfriend and their toddler daughter had been visiting Michael Bruyere, 34, on Feb. 11, at an apartment belonging to Bruyere’s aunt, when Bonwick left for a time to pick something up at a nearby convenience store. When he returned, the ex-girlfriend later told police, Bonwick “was acting like a zombie” and appeared to be high on Xanax.

When Bonwick picked a fight with the woman, causing her to retreat to a bedroom with their child, Bruyere intervened and told Bonwick to leave, court heard. Bonwick “freaked out” and stabbed Bruyere eight times in the neck, face and chest, puncturing his heart.

Bonwick poured bleach on the floor around Bruyere’s body before leaving the building with his ex-girlfriend and child and meeting outside with his father, who he had called earlier to pick up the child, Crown attorney Mark Kantor told court.

When Bonwick told his father he had stabbed someone, the father drove away with the child and called police.

Bonwick, who fled the house with his ex-girlfriend in Bruyere’s aunt’s car, was arrested later that same day outside a Salter Street convenience store.

Bonwick has an “exceptionally limited criminal record,” Gladstone said, but his adult life has been marked by “significant substance abuse struggles,” beginning at 18, when cocaine and pills “became a problem.”

Kantor and Gladstone jointly recommended Bonwick be allowed to apply for parole after serving 10 years in prison, the minimum period of parole ineligibility allowed by law.

Dewar said he accepted Bonwick’s early guilty plea as a genuine sign of remorse.

“If nothing else, that shows an individual who is at least prepared to try to overcome what caused him to do such a terrible thing in the past,” Dewar said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca