Second woman pleads guilty to murder in 2022 stairwell slaying

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This article was published 29/01/2024 (671 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg woman has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for her role in the “chilling and heartbreaking” slaying of a mother of four in a Manitoba Housing complex stairwell.

Meagan Beaulieu, 29, was one of two women charged in the May 19, 2022, death of Doris Lydia Trout, a 25-year-old originally from God’s Lake First Nation.

Trout’s body was found in the sixth-floor stairwell of 444 Kennedy St. in Winnipeg, at 4:18 a.m., by a security guard doing his rounds.

Beaulieu’s co-accused, 36-year-old Leah Carol Clifton, pleaded guilty in the Court of King’s Bench last week to second-degree murder in a plea bargain worked out between Crown prosecutors and her defence lawyer.

Clifton was sentenced to life in prison, with no parole eligibility for 20 years. She had initially been charged with first-degree murder, which carries a life sentence with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

On Monday, Beaulieu pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in front of King’s Bench Justice Herbert Rempel.

She, too, had initially been charged with first-degree murder, but agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in part because of Clifton’s plea, Crown prosecutor Adam Gingera told court.

The Crown and Beaulieu’s defence lawyers, Adam Hodge and Jessie Brar, jointly recommended Beaulieu be sentenced to life with no parole eligibility for 20 years.

Rempel accepted her plea, calling the facts of the brutal case “chilling and heartbreaking.”

Beaulieu, a mother of three, had gone to see her boyfriend at a friend’s home on Juno Street the day prior to Trout’s killing, where she also met the victim and Clifton. (At the time, Clifton was wanted by police for her alleged role in another slaying, which is still before the court.)

Beaulieu claimed to police, while confessing to the killing, she was fearful of Clifton, who Gingera described Monday as being the “architect” of Trout’s slaying.

Clifton was angered by things Trout had done at the home, where the group was using drugs together, and further angered after receiving a video of her boyfriend being shot and killed, court was told.

The trio of women left Juno Street to collect drug debts at the Kennedy Street apartment on behalf of one of the men in the house, court heard last week.

Beaulieu claimed to police she had implored Trout to leave, but she did not go.

In the apartment complex, video collected by homicide detectives showed Beaulieu and Clifton hitting the smaller woman at various points before they entered the sixth-floor stairwell, where no camera was located.

There, court heard last week, Beaulieu hit Trout, before Clifton put her on the floor with her hands on her back. Clifton pulled the gun out and planned to shoot her, before discovering it was a pellet gun.

Beaulieu claimed Clifton then directed her to tie Trout’s hoodie strings and pull them tightly, while Clifton placed her hand over Trout’s mouth, before Clifton took over pulling the strings.

Trout stopped moving and Clifton fled, leaving behind a knife, which Beaulieu picked up and fled with.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca