Women with ‘dreadful’ pasts spared from long sentences for 2023 slaying

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This article was published 20/06/2025 (421 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two intellectually vulnerable women, who were arrested for the alcohol-fuelled beating death of a 33-year-old Winnipeg man, have been spared lengthy prison sentences after a judge ruled a shorter term in a provincial jail would allow them to stay connected to needed supports.

Cherilyn Ashley Dumas, 22, and Calianna Grace Keeper, 21, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the November 2023 killing of Derek Karl Stevenson. Court of King’s Bench Justice Chris Martin sentenced them to 54 months in custody and 48 months of custody, respectively.

Prosecutors had sought a nine-year prison sentence for Dumas and a seven-year sentence for Keeper.

Dumas and Keeper each received credit for time served, reducing their remaining sentence to less than two years, which will be served in a provincial jail, rather than a federal prison out of province.

“Ultimately, I find that Ms. Dumas and Ms. Keeper, and in turn the community, (are) best served by… a provincial sentence,” Martin said. “A federal sentence would be adverse by removing them from whatever limited family or known supports they may have in the community.”

An agreed statement of facts provided to court says Dumas, Keeper and Stevenson had been drinking heavily at the Austin Street rooming house suite where Dumas lived when she and Stevenson — who Dumas described as her “best friend” — started to fight.

Dumas punched Stevenson and beat him in the head with a frying pan. Keeper admitted she hit Stevenson in the head three times.

Dumas told police that during the beating, she and Keeper passed out on a bed and Stevenson passed out on the floor. Dumas said when she and Keeper woke up, Stevenson was “cold,” and they realized he was dead. An autopsy determined he had bled to death.

Keeper called her social worker and left the suite when she arrived. Dumas continued to drink. When Stevenson’s body started to smell, she left for her mother’s home and told her what had happened. Dumas and her mother returned to the suite and spent an hour cleaning up blood before the mother left.

The woman’s stepfather later called 911 to report a dead body in the suite. Police arrived around 2:30 a.m. and arrested Dumas.

Keeper was arrested a day later.

Dumas and Keeper have been failed by a system that doomed them to lives of neglect, poverty and abuse, defence lawyers told court at a sentencing hearing last month.

Keeper has an IQ below 50, has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and spent her childhood in foster care and group homes, where her frequent violent outbursts made her a challenge to manage, her lawyer Scott Newman told court.

Keeper — who was released from custody on charges of mischief and uttering threats just three days before Stevenson was killed — is unable to live independently and should live in a supervised group home, Newman said.

“We as a society have repeatedly failed to meet her needs,” he said. “She never ever should have been out on her own on the offence date… This is not a case where at 21 years of age the only way to protect the community is to warehouse her.”

Dumas has an IQ of 70 and a long history of substance abuse. A doctor’s report provided to court says she has been diagnosed with conduct disorder, and has issues with executive functioning, verbal comprehension and impulsiveness.

“Rehabilitation cannot be overstated in these circumstances,” said her lawyer Candace Olson, describing Dumas’s background as “horrendous.”

Martin described the circumstances of Stevenson’s death and the personal backgrounds of Dumas and Keeper as “dreadful, yet not uncommon to the court.”

“In the circumstances, an appropriately balanced sentence must account for potential rehabilitation and enhance long-term safety of the community as a primary consideration,” Martin said.

Martin sentenced Dumas and Keeper to an additional three years of supervised probation which requires they possess no weapons and participate in counselling or treatment that is ordered for them.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca