Teens plead guilty in 2022 slaying at Assiniboine Park

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/09/2023 (754 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just hours after stabbing and bludgeoning Paul Enns to death in a Winnipeg park, two Interlake-area teens bragged to friends about the slaying, boasting they “did it smart” and wouldn’t get caught, a court heard Monday.

The now-18-year-old man and 17-year-old girl pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the unprovoked Feb. 25, 2022, killing.

Enns, 43, was found dead in the backseat of his BMW, in a parking lot near Conservatory Drive in Assiniboine Park, at 3 a.m., Feb. 26.

Court heard Enns was lured to the location under the pretext of a sexual encounter after the teens contacted him over social media.

The two teens sat in separate prisoner boxes about four metres apart and did not look at each other Monday, as Crown attorney Jodi Koffman read from an agreed statement of facts.

The victim’s parents, sister, aunt and a close friend left the courtroom as Koffman detailed the circumstances of the killing.

According to a mutual acquaintance, the male teen and Enns had a “physically hostile encounter” sometime prior to the fatal attack, while the girl had never met Enns before, Koffman told court.

The teens and Enns exchanged more than 100 text messages in the hours prior to the attack.

As the male teen hid nearby outside, the girl joined Enns in his car shortly before midnight and stabbed him three times with a sharpened screwdriver. The male teen then joined the attack, beating Enns with his fists and a baseball bat.

Just two hours later, the two teens met with a friend outside a Stonewall service station and “bragged about beating up the deceased,” showing the friend where Enns had scratched them, Koffman said.

Another acquaintance told police the teens made a similar disclosure a short time later.

“They were laughing and smiling a lot and said they weren’t going to get caught because they did it smart,” Koffman quoted the friend as saying. The teens told the acquaintance they beat Enns “and watched him beg for his life.”

“They were laughing and smiling a lot and said they weren’t going to get caught because they did it smart.”–Crown attorney Jodi Koffman

A day prior to the killing, the male teen tried to enlist a friend’s help “jumping a pedo,” and offered to pay him $300, Koffman said. The friend declined.

A day after the killing, the male teen, in a video chat with the same friend over Instagram, laughed and said he had beat Enns so bad “there was, like, nothing left.” The teen said there was “no way” he was going to get caught, because he was “smart with it.”

At school in Stonewall a couple of days later, the friend asked the girl if the male teen, her then-boyfriend, had been telling the truth about the attack. When the friend told the girl she was going to get caught, she replied: “No we’re not… we did it smart.”

A day after the killing, the teens used Enns’s credit card at Polo Park mall in Winnipeg to buy popcorn and a pair of runners for the girl. The girl was wearing the runners when police arrested her at her Stonewall home March 1, 2022.

Police arrested the male teen three days later at a Winnipeg hospital where he was being treated for an unrelated illness.

Police executed a search warrant at the male teen’s Warren home prior to his arrest and found “what appears to be an instruction book on murder,” hidden above the ceiling panels of his closet, Crown attorney John Ham alleged at a bail hearing for the female accused in March 2022.

The instruction book included a passage touting the alleged value of “assassins.” Journals seized from the teen’s room included drawings of homemade weapons and notes about making bombs, court was told.

The girl was not granted bail. The male teen has never applied for release.

A sentencing date will be set in December, following the completion of court ordered reports.

On Monday, the male teen smiled at a couple believed to be his parents as he was led out of court in shackles and handcuffs. The girl was taken out of court minutes later, and said “I love you” to her mother and grandmother waiting in the hallway.

Koffman said the Crown will be seeking an order that both offenders be sentenced as adults.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca