Guilty charge in stabbing death

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This article was published 15/12/2022 (1038 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A judge rejected a Manitoba man’s claim he had no memory of stabbing his on-again, off-again girlfriend more than two dozen times and convicted him Tuesday of second-degree murder.

Monica Chippeway, 35, died on March 26, 2020, inside her Lake Manitoba First Nation home following a frenzied attack witnessed by her young daughter.

Phoenix Maytwayashing admitted killing Chippeway, but argued he should be found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, claiming he was so intoxicated by alcohol, pills and cocaine he had no memory of the attack and lacked the necessary intent to kill for a finding of murder.

King’s Bench Justice Herbert Rempel said Maytwayashing’s “convenient” loss of memory was soundly refuted by the evidence of multiple witnesses who testified he showed no obvious signs he was intoxicated before or after the killing.

“I don’t believe the accused at all about his state of intoxication,” Rempel said. “Every witness called by the prosecution confirmed without exception that the accused spoke clearly and intelligibly and was steady on his feet.”

Maytwayashing will return to court on March 31 for sentencing. The minimum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

Prosecutors alleged Maytwayashing flew into a rage after Chippeway rejected his appeals to reconcile.

Court heard evidence at trial Maytwayashing visited Chippeway’s house three times the day she was killed. Maytwayashing arrived the first time with a bottle of wine and Chippeway turned him away. He returned sometime later with a bag of groceries and was turned away again.

When Maytwayashing returned a third time he stabbed Chippeway 32 times in the head, neck and body.

“The disfigurement to her face was particularly horrifying,” Rempel said.

“I am satisfied that the Crown was successful in establishing a motive of a revenge killing on all the facts before me” and that Maytwayashing’s claim he was in a “drug-induced state of amnesia… was a cover story he invented to explain his horrifying and cold-blooded attack on Ms. Chippeway,” Rempel said.

Chippeway’s now-10-year-old daughter testified she rushed to her mother’s aid as she was being stabbed to death, only to have Maytwayashing turn the knife on her.

“He was hurting her and I kept on trying to tell him to stop,” the girl told court.

In a police interview video recorded a month after the killing and played in court at trial, the girl said she was in her bedroom when she heard her mother scream. The girl said she ran out of her room to see Maytwayashing “holding a knife and hurting her.”

The girl said she came between her mother and Maytwayashing when she was slashed on her ear, chest and arm.

“Before he was nice,” she said. “I don’t know why he did it.”

The girl said she ran shoeless out of the house to her grandparents’ home, where her father arrived a short time later and called police.

A man who was staying in the same house as Maytwayashing at the time of the killing told court they and two other men had been drinking at home that afternoon, after a day running errands in nearby Ste. Rose du Lac.

“Phoenix said he was going to see Monica,” Jeffrey Williams (also Chippeway’s cousin) told court. “The first time he left, he brought a bottle of wine. He seemed normal.”

Maytwayashing returned about 15 minutes later, gathered up some groceries and left again, Williams said.

“The second time he came back he was… drenched in blood,” he said. “It was on his face, on his arms. It was running down his hands.”

Maytwayashing “kept on telling us he had ‘f—ed up’ and told us all to get out of the house,” Williams said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca