Thirteen years behind bars for slitting sister’s throat

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This article was published 20/05/2024 (741 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Manitoba woman who slit her sister’s throat in a drug-fuelled fit of rage and grief, leaving her gravely wounded sibling to stumble half a kilometre for help, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Kathleen Flatfoot, 50, pleaded guilty to attempted murder for the March 13, 2023 attack on the outskirts of Dauphin.

Flatfoot’s crime “is an extremely violent one and her behaviour afterward was cold, calculated and designed to avoid arrest,” provincial court Judge Geoff Bayly said in a written ruling released May 13.

Two weeks prior to the attack, Flatfoot’s daughter accidentally froze to death on Lake Winnipegosis, sending Flatfoot into a grief tailspin of drugs and alcohol, court was told at an earlier sentencing hearing.

On March 12, Flatfoot and her son asked the victim and her husband if they could drive them around to pick up money collected by the community for her daughter’s funeral and then into Dauphin to make funeral arrangements. The victim agreed, but said she would need $200 for gas.

“This upset (Flatfoot), who was already frustrated that only $60 had been collected by the community to help bury her daughter,” Bayly said.

During the drive to Dauphin, Flatfoot was drinking and consuming cocaine. She became angry and started talking about going “on a killing spree.”

Once in Dauphin, the group decided to separate until the funeral home opened the next morning, with Flatfoot and her son staying at a relative’s home and the victim and her husband at a nearby home.

As the night wore on, Flatfoot continued drinking and complained angrily about her family, particularly her sister, saying: “I could just give her a licking.”

At 4 a.m., accompanied by her son and another male, Flatfoot set out looking for her sister.

They found the victim at a house two doors away and told her they had been kicked out and needed a ride. The victim and her husband agreed and after two stops to pick up money and more drugs, drove them to a cemetery on the edge of town where they would wait until the funeral home opened.

While parked at the cemetery, Flatfoot said to her son:” Let’s just kill these f——-s and take their truck.” Flatfoot then pulled out a hunting knife, reached into the front seat, grabbed her sister’s forehead with one hand, and used the other to slit her throat.

“This created a wound extending across her sister’s neck, slicing open skin and muscle, wounding her trachea and cutting open jugular veins resulting in significant blood loss,” Bayly said.

Everyone bolted out of the truck, with Flatfoot telling her son and the other male to catch the victim’s husband, who was beaten so badly he could not help his wife.

Flatfoot, her son and the other male fled in the truck, abandoning it in a park before walking to a nearby apartment building, where security cameras captured them laughing together. Once they were let inside, another security camera captured Flatfoot disposing of her jacket in the garbage.

The victim stumbled to the funeral home, bleeding from her neck as she rang a doorbell for help. When none came, she walked to a Tim Hortons restaurant half a kilometre away. Unable to speak due to her injuries, the woman wrote a note to staff, alerting them to her injured husband.

The woman was rushed to the local hospital and then transferred to a Winnipeg hospital where she remained for seven days.

The woman “summoned an incredible amount of strength out of her sheer will to live,” Bayly said. “Her wound is obvious and is no doubt a daily reminder of her sister’s attempt to kill her.”

According to a presentence report prepared for court, Flatfoot was raised by her mother and stepfather, who shared four children together, including the victim, with the stepfather treating Flatfoot cruelly in comparison to his biological children. Flatfoot’s parents were violent with each other and substance abuse was common, she said.

According to Flatfoot, her parents held frequent drinking parties, during which her stepfather would have all the children except her stay at another home. Flatfoot said on at least two occasions she was sexually abused by party guests.

Flatfoot said on occasion her stepfather deprived her of food and had her sleep in a barn because she “wasn’t his.”

Flatfoot was apprehended by Child and Family Services when she was 13 and placed in a home where she was sexually abused. Flatfoot’s mother and stepfather were required to complete a six-month substance abuse program to regain custody of her.

After Flatfoot returned home, she was at the dinner table when her stepfather forced her to eat his program certificate, Flatfoot told the report writer.

Flatfoot “went on to describe many other acts of neglect and torment suffered at the hands of both parents; the court has no reason to doubt any of them,” Bayly said.

Flatfoot’s attack on her sister was against a backdrop of a “lifetime of familial neglect and abuse, drug addiction and intergenerational trauma,” Bayly said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca