Man sentenced to 11 years after pleading guilty in roommate’s shooting death

A dispute over rent money sparked a fatal attack on a woman whose body was discovered after her apartment suite had been set on fire, a court has heard.

Joey Robertson Lecoy, 30, pleaded guilty to manslaughter Monday in the January 2023 shotgun killing off 23-year-old Star Alicia Thomas and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Lecoy was originally charged with second-degree murder but admitted guilt to the lesser charge of manslaughter in a plea bargain that took into account “frailties” in the Crown’s case, which included the subsequent overdose death of Lecoy’s girlfriend, the only other living witness to the shooting.

“It is one thing to plead guilty when the evidence against someone is overwhelming, it is quite another to plead guilty when there is a chance of an acquittal,” Lecoy’s lawyer Martin Glazer told King’s Bench Justice Sarah Inness.

Court heard Lecoy and Thomas shared an apartment at the Adanac Apartments building on Sargent Avenue. On Jan. 3, 2023, shortly before 9 a.m. the two roommates started arguing. Thomas was walking to the suite door to leave when Lecoy picked up a sawed-off shotgun and fired buckshot at her head and neck. Buckshot pellets penetrated Thomas’s lungs and heart, killing her.

Lecoy and his girlfriend packed a few bags of belongings and fled.

“With Ms. Thomas’s body still in the suite, a fire was set in the suite by an unknown individual,” Crown attorney Bryton Moen told court. “There is no evidence Mr. Lecoy directed anyone to set the fire or had personal knowledge of it.”

After the blaze triggered a fire alarm, another tenant checked the suite and found Thomas’s body, after which it was left outside the building on a toboggan, where responding firefighters found it minutes later.

Lecoy and his girlfriend went to a friend’s nearby home and Lecoy asked the woman “How do you get shotgun residue off” Moen said. When the woman asked him why he wanted to know, Lecoy told her he and Thomas had been arguing over the rent and she “wouldn’t stop bitching.”

“In response, (Lecoy) grabbed a sawed-off shotgun and pointed it at (Thomas) to scare her,” Moen said. “He confessed to (the woman) that he pulled the trigger and shot the victim.”

The woman gave Lecoy and his girlfriend money for a cab and they left. Police arrested Lecoy on March 27, 2023, at a Kennedy Street apartment while investigating another matter.

Thomas’s family described her as a “smart woman , someone who could bring laughter to situations, someone with enormous potential… now extinguished,” Moen said.

Family members said they forgave Lecoy, “but they do nevertheless want justice,” Moen said.

Court heard Lecoy has multiple convictions for violence and a history of not complying with probation orders.

Glazer said Lecoy was high on fentanyl, methamphetamine and alcohol at the time of the shooting.

“The shooting happened without any intention to kill… while he was high, intoxicated and emotional,” Glazer said.

Lecoy has struggled with addictions for a decade, spent much of his childhood in abusive foster homes and most of his adult life homeless or in jail, Glazer said.

“He never really had a chance to succeed in life,” he said.

Inness urged Lecoy to take inspiration from the Thomas family’s “remarkable” message of forgiveness and use his time in prison to participate in counselling and other rehabilitative programming.

Lecoy received credit for time served, reducing his remaining sentence to just over six years.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca