Man said he should get life for slaying, court told

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This article was published 07/12/2022 (1044 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SILAS Ammaklak, who already had one manslaughter conviction, told police he should spend “the rest of (his) life in jail” after he was arrested for killing a woman he had just met.

“I don’t want to do this ever, ever again,” Ammaklak told police during a lengthy interview following his arrest for the July 2020 killing of 35-year-old Danielle Harper.

Ammaklak’s second-degree murder trial started Monday.

In 2008, Ammaklak pleaded guilty in Nunavut to manslaughter in the beating death of his wife, Susan Natar, and was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

The conviction was not raised by Winnipeg police during Ammaklak’s August 2020 interview, nor is it before the court at his current trial, which is being heard by King’s Bench Justice Sadie Bond.

Court was told Harper was reported missing from her home at New Directions supportive housing on July 14. Ten days later her decomposing body was discovered in Ammaklak’s apartment on Manitoba Avenue. He was arrested three weeks later.

Ammaklak, 53, told police he met Harper at a bus shelter at Main Street and Higgins Avenue, at which time she shared some alcohol with him before the two took a bus to his apartment.

Ammaklak provided investigators with a shifting version of events, including a claim he and Harper were followed to his home by two men, one of them armed with a bat, before admitting he had lied.

Ammaklak said he made lunch for Harper and the two drank from bottles of vodka and beer Harper had brought. Ammaklak said Harper wanted to have sex, but he couldn’t maintain an erection. Sometime later, he said, he heard “whispering” voices telling him to pick up his pocketknife from a coffee table and stab Harper.

“The evil person who was talking to me… showed me a great big burning fire that never ends,” he said. “I didn’t want to be at that fire, it really got me scared.”

Ammaklak said he stabbed Harper three times and then covered her mouth and nose with his hand until she stopped breathing.

Ammaklak said he grabbed a backpack, fled the apartment and did not return before his arrest.

Ammaklak said he only heard the “evil” voice when he had been drinking.

“When I was not drinking, I think it would totally not ever happen,” Ammaklak said.

Harper “was so nice and I wanted to be nice to her,” he said. “Everything that happened that day is my fault.”

Left alone in the interview room, Ammaklak sobbed as he pledged to “stop lying so much, even though I have killed that lady.”

“Thank-you investigators for opening my heart, my mind, my will…. Oh, what a life I was given totally and I totally destroyed it.”

Trial testimony was derailed late Tuesday afternoon after defence lawyer Saheel Zaman raised concerns about the accuracy of interpretive services being provided to the court and his client, whose first language is not English.

“By not having adequate interpretation when needed, that compromises” Ammaklak’s right to a fair trial, Zaman said.

Bond dismissed the interpreter and adjourned the trial until Thursday to give Crown and defence counsel time to resolve the issue.

“Interpretation is important,” Bond said. “Mr Ammaklak needs to understand the proceedings against him.”

Ammaklak had spent five years in jail in Nunavut when he pleaded guilty in 2008 to manslaughter in the 2003 beating death of his wife.

Court was told Ammaklak punched and kicked 29-year-old Natar and threw her off a balcony before dragging her back into her home and beating her to death with a piece of walrus cartilage.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca