First-degree murder charges for teens accused in Main Street homicide

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This article was published 21/10/2022 (1052 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two 15-year-old males arrested in two killings in Winnipeg’s Point Douglas neighbourhood now face first-degree murder charges for one of the slayings.

Police arrested the teens following a string of attacks on Aug. 22 along the Main Street strip.

Marvin William Felix, 54, was attacked in a lane behind a hotel on the 600 block of Main Street and died three days later.

The teens were initially charged with aggravated assault in connection to the attack. The charges were upgraded to second-degree murder after Felix died.

On Wednesday, during a hearing at the Manitoba Youth Centre, Crown prosecutor Erika Dolcetti formally stayed the second-degree murder charges, telling court charges had now been authorized for first-degree murder.

A charge of first-degree murder denotes a killing that is planned and deliberate, while a charge of second-degree murder is laid in killings that are deliberate but not planned.

“He is aware what the charges are,” Laura Robinson, lawyer for one of the teens, told provincial court Judge Heather Pullan. “We have gone through that with him and we are going to spend some more time going through the disclosure.”

The teens are charged with second-degree murder in the killing of 36-year-old Danielle Dawn Ballantyne, identified as the first slaying victim, whose body was found in a Jarvis Avenue apartment.

They are also charged with aggravated assault for an attack on a man in his 50s on the 800 block of Main Street.

The next court date for the teens is Dec. 6.

“This is one of the bigger cases, there is a hard drive full of disclosure, lots of different crime scenes a lot to go through — that’s why we are looking for a little longer remand,” Dolcetti told Pullan.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca