Man pleads guilty to manslaughter

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This article was published 29/07/2022 (1392 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nevis Carter and Oghenetega Ufuoma didn’t know each other, but they had a couple of things in common: each struggled with mental illness and were living on the street.

When Carter and Ufuoma crossed paths in the early morning hours of Nov. 18, Ufuoma was hunkered with all his belongings in his “makeshift home” – an Osborne Village bus shelter, Crown attorney Andrew Slough told court recently.

It was a meeting that would end in Ufuoma’s death, and the Nigerian immigrant’s body “callously” stuffed in a shopping cart.

“People sheltering or living in bus shacks is a sight that we see across the city,” Slough said. “So often, though, it’s a sight that we look away from, ignore, or even view as a nuisance… It’s all too easy to lose sight of the people who dwell in these shacks, the complexity of their lives, their humanity.”

Carter, 39, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the unprovoked killing and was sentenced this month to 10 years in prison.

Carter sobbed as he apologized to members of Ufuoma’s family, who watched the sentencing hearing remotely from Nigeria.

“It’s a constant pain in my chest… In all my years of living, I never thought I would be involved in something like this,” said Carter, who offered no explanation for the attack.

Carter — who was diagnosed with anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoia and other disorders — abandoned a motion that he be found not criminally responsible for the slaying.

“At the time of this incident, he was struggling with mental-health issues, including delusions and hallucinations,” Slough told provincial court Judge Brent Stewart, reading from an agreed statement of facts. “However, Carter accepts he was capable of appreciating the nature and quality of his actions or of knowing they were wrong at the time he committed this offence.”

Slough said Carter and another unidentified attacker chased Ufuoma from a bus shelter at the corner of River Avenue and Osborne to the outside of a nearby Subway restaurant where they repeatedly kicked and punched him in the head.

Left alone, Ufuoma returned to the bus shelter. Carter returned several minutes later and resumed the attack, knocking the 41-year-old man unconscious. Security video captured Carter walking to a back lane and returning with a shopping cart. Carter dumped Ufuoma into the shopping cart and wheeled it to the back lane where a garbage truck driver discovered Ufuoma around 7 a.m.

Ufuoma was pronounced dead in hospital.

“While cold exposure may have been a factor in the cause of death, the degree of injury to the head was enough to kill him,” Slough said.

Ufuoma, who had a seven-year-old daughter, came to Canada a decade ago searching for a better life, only to meet a “tragic end,” Slough said. In the days before his death he had been working with a Nigerian community leader to address his mental-health struggles.

Carter was released from jail eight days before the killing, having served seven months for a pair of thefts from Shoppers Drug Mart. Court heard his adult life has been marked by lengthy periods of homelessness and instability, substance abuse and mental illness.

Carter’s mental health has stabilized significantly while in custody and he has gained “significant insight into the… horrific mistake he made that night,” said defence lawyer Carley Mahoney.

Carter racked up 22 convictions for theft from 2019 to 2021. His then-lawyer told a judge at an October sentencing hearing that Carter’s offending was exacerbated by a lack of community resources.

Lawyer Nolan Boucher told court he came up against “incredible hurdles” as he tried to secure community supports for Carter in the period between his release from custody and supervision by a probation officer.

The defence lawyer said he tried to have Carter’s case diverted to the province’s mental-health court, which would be in a better position to connect him with services, but Carter wasn’t accepted because his illness was determined to be drug induced.

In January 2021, Carter tried to have a robbery charge diverted to the province’s drug court, but was denied admission. Boucher said he was told the offence, which was later downgraded to theft, was considered too serious to be handled by the court.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca