Man sentenced for killing sparked by kiss

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This article was published 05/11/2020 (1794 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Driven by jealousy and alcohol-fuelled rage, Nathan Paul beat Tanner Grieves to death after catching him kissing his ex-girlfriend.

At a sentencing hearing Thursday, the victim’s family members balanced their grief with a message of forgiveness.

“He just loved everyone,” Grieves’s grandmother wrote in a victim impact statement that was read out in court. “He forgave people who hurt him… That’s what keeps me going every day.”

Paul, 23, pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the Oct. 31, 2018, killing and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

“Tanner believed with all his heart in forgiveness, and we as a family agreed we would go the way he would have wanted us to go,” said his aunt Martha Grieves. “When you can’t make sense of the hows and whys, it is extremely hard. Now that the day is here, all we have to go on with is Tanner’s faith in forgiveness.”

Court was told Paul’s girlfriend had broken up with him a day before he came upon Grieves, 21, and the woman kissing outside a house party in Oxford House.

Paul, who had just left another nearby house party, immediately attacked Grieves, kicking and punching him while he was on the ground.

Paul interrupted the attack to bang on the door of a nearby house, only to return seconds later to continue the beating, Crown attorney Melissa Serbin told Queen’s Bench Justice Herbert Rempel.

When Grieves stopped moving, Paul ran to a nearby house and told the occupants to call police, because he “may have killed a guy,” Serbin said.

Police arrived to find Paul trying to revive Grieves. Police performed CPR but were unable to revive Grieves and he was declared dead.

Questioned by police, Paul readily admitted responsibility for the killing, saying he “lost it” when he saw Grieves with his ex-girlfriend.

Paul told police he attempted to clear the victim’s airway by sucking the blood out of his mouth and spitting it on the ground.

“This is not an individual who just left Mr. Grieves on the street and ran away,” said defence lawyer Jonathan Robbins.

Court was told Paul’s upbringing was marked by disadvantages common to many Indigenous offenders, including a family history of residential school attendance, substance abuse and neglect, and CFS involvement. A psychiatric forensic report prepared for court found his intellectual functioning is “extremely low” for his age, such that he falls into the legal category of a vulnerable person.

In a hearing that highlighted the challenges courts are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rempel sentenced Paul from a Winnipeg courtroom, while Paul remained at Headingley Correctional Centre, participating via video link. Crown and defence lawyers, made their submissions via video from a Thompson courtroom.

“I know there were a lot of extra moving parts here… so I am grateful to all of you for going well beyond the call of duty here to make this work,” Rempel said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca