Seven years for alcohol-fuelled fatal stabbing

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This article was published 23/02/2022 (1522 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg woman who stabbed a city bootlegger and left him to die in his apartment has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

Shyla Walker, 33, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the August 2019 killing of 64-year-old John Graham Buesnel.

“This was not a crime Ms. Walker just got caught up in,” Crown attorney David Burland told Queen’s Bench Justice Sadie Bond at a sentencing hearing Wednesday. “She stabbed him multiple times and left him to die.”

According to an agreed statement of facts provided to court, Buesnel made wine, which he sold out of his Elgin Street apartment. Walker and her sister Taylor Lapierre, who was also initially charged in the killing, and their mother, were drinking at Buesnel’s apartment when the sisters got into an argument with Buesnel that turned physical.

Lapierre punched Buesnel, knocking him to the floor, at which point Walker grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed Buesnel three times, including once in the heart.

Walker and Lapierre grabbed a jug of Buesnel’s wine and went to the suite of another apartment resident and continued drinking.

Walker’s mother, who had passed out, woke up to see Buesnel on the floor. She fled the building. Another apartment resident later found Buesnel and called police.

“I forgive you for killing my dad and I hope your children forgive you too for not being there for them,” Buesnel’s daughter Catherine told court via telephone, reading from a prepared victim impact statement.

“I don’t know what your excuse was, but that’s no reason to (kill) an old man,” she said. “You should have just walked away.”

Walker has a family history of alcohol trouble, has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was homeless at the time of the killing, defence lawyer Mike Cook told court.

“Alcohol was a huge factor in the narrative that unfolded that night,” Cook said.

Walker had been charged with second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of manslaughter on the basis it could not be proven she intended to kill Buesnel.

Walker “acted out of protection for her sister, but then it turned to anger,” Cook said.

Walker didn’t know what condition Buesnel was in when she left the apartment,” Cook said.

“She did not think he was dead. She did not think he was dying,” he said.

Walker received credit for time served, reducing her sentence to just under 3½ years in prison.

Charges against Lapierre were recently stayed.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca