Gang members who killed as kids sentenced as adults

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This article was published 19/03/2015 (4170 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They were just 15-years-old when they brutally beat a man to death in front of his young daughter.

But two Winnipeg gang members have received an adult dose of punishment for their roles in the August 2011 killing of Joseph Lalonde.

Brendon Sinclair and Jordan Murdock learned Thursday they would be given the maximum penalty allowed by law of life in prison with no chance of parole for at least seven years. Queen’s Bench Justice Rick Saull agreed with the Crown’s request to give the youths, who are now 18, adult sentences.

Sinclair and Murdock were convicted of second-degree murder following a jury trial last year.

Lalonde, 48, died after being brutally assaulted outside his Dufferin Avenue home. He’d stepped in to protect his pregnant daughter from an attack by the teens. Both were Manitoba Warriors associates who mistook her for an Indian Posse gang rival.

One of them had ridden his bike by Lalonde’s home just minutes before and saw another youth flash an IP gang sign. He rode up the street to a nearby home and met up with his co-accused. They armed themselves with a bat and air rifle to return and settle the score.

Every bone in Lalonde’s face was shattered in the minute-long attack he endured. The attack was witnessed by his daughter, who was bashed with the bat after she tried to pull one of the killers off him.

Lalonde lost consciousness in the yard and never regained it. He died in hospital a few days later.

Sinclair and Murdock had sought to be convicted of manslaughter on the grounds they were intoxicated at the time and couldn’t form the necessary intent to commit murder. Jurors rejected that bid.

If they had been sentenced as youths, the maximum penalty for both would have been four years of prison and three years of conditional supervision in the community.

 

www.mikeoncrime.com