Man gets 12 years for West End shooting that injured 2 girls

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This article was published 09/01/2012 (5024 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for a pair of botched revenge attack that injured two young girls.

The 21-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to the shooting of a Victor Street home in May 2010. He believed the residence may have included gang members who played a role in the murder of his friend, Kyle Earl, just one day earlier, court was told.

In fact, the house had absolutely no connection to crime. A 10-year-old girl was hit in the leg and flying glass grazed an eight-year-old girl in the face.

“One minute they’re watching TV, the next thing they know they’re being shot at,” said Crown attorney Carla Dewar.

Earl, 16, was shot and killed while sitting on the front stoop of a Toronto Street house on a weekday afternoon. A 13-year-old boy was also wounded by gunfire. No arrests in the slaying have been made, although police suspect gang involvement.

The young man – who is connected to the Indian Posse street gang – witnessed Earl getting shot. He ran into his nearby home, grabbed a rifle and chased after what he believed to be the gunman through the West End. He fired off several shots, hitting two vehicles in the process and narrowly missing three innocent pedestrians in the area. There were no injuries.

“It was obviously a very scary situation,” Dewar said Monday.

The cases made headlines across Canada, led to an increased police presence in the neighbourhood and prompted angry citizens to take action.

The Free Press is not publishing the name of the man in order to report details of his youth record, which includes the fact he was involved in the fatal shooting of a 13-year-old boy in February 2008.

In that case, the man, who was 17 years old at the time, broke into a Home Street garage with 13-year-old Cody Shuya. After the two fought over a loaded pellet gun left there, the gun fired and shot Shuya’s eye, fatally damaging his brain. The 17-year-old pleaded guilty in 2008 to careless use of a firearm and was given six months behind bars.

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See tomorrow’s Winnipeg Free Press for more on this story.

Mike McIntyre
Reporter

Mike McIntyre is a sports reporter whose primary role is covering the Winnipeg Jets. After graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College in 1995, he spent two years gaining experience at the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 1997, where he served on the crime and justice beat until 2016. Read more about Mike.

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