Teen pleads guilty to three random slayings in 2022

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2025 (232 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A teenager who was involved in three unprovoked slayings of strangers in 2022 — including the beating of a man who was asleep in his wheelchair — has pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of manslaughter.

The teen was 15 at the time of the attacks, which were in and around Winnipeg’s Main Street during the early hours of Aug. 22, 2022. The offender, who is now 18, appeared before Court of King’s Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg Tuesday.

Danielle Dawn Ballantyne, 36, died that day, while Troy Baguley, 51, and Marvin William Felix, 54, died later after being taken off life-support.

The prosecution is seeking to have the teen sentenced as an adult, which would amount to an automatic life sentence, while the defence wants a youth sentence.

Crown prosecutor Lisa Carson told court the teen and a co-accused youth, who’s charged in the three killings and is expected to appear in court next week, both went missing from their group home in Wolseley on the evening before the attacks,

The pair returned to the group home at about 8:25 a.m. Winnipeg Police Service officers arrested one teen the day after the attacks at a sweat lodge on Wall Street that was affiliated with his group home. He was still wearing the T-shirt and ball cap he’d worn while attacking the victims.

The co-accused was arrested in Long Plain First Nation by the Manitoba First Nations Police Service five days after the attacks.

No motive for the crimes was given in court.

Reading from an agreed statement of facts, Carson said the bloodshed began at about 4:20 a.m. in and around 813 Main St., just south of Jarvis Avenue.

The teen participated in a group beating of Baguley in which the victim was kicked, punched and stomped on.

“He was then dragged off the road into a parking lot, where the assault continued while Baguley laid motionless,” said Carson.

Two others — a 13-year-old boy and an adult co-accused — Tristan Moose, 23, who pleaded down his second-degree murder charge to aggravated assault in December — came upon the parking lot at 817 Main St., said Carson.

The 13-year-old, Carson told court, informed police that the boys who began the assault had claimed to him and Moose that Baguley was a “skinner” — street slang for a sex criminal.

The status of that boy’s charges was not immediately clear.

The two participated in the attack by kicking him in the body, Carson said.

During the beating, which lasted seven minutes, the group pulled down the victim’s pants and exposed his genitals. The attack was caught on surveillance video from across the parking lot.

Baguley had a slew of injuries, including to his brain, which led to a “total loss of cognitive capacity.” He was not expected to leave a medical facility, Carson told court, and when his next of kin was located, a decision was made to remove him from life-support. He died in March 2023.

For his role in the attack on Baguley, the 18-year-old pleaded his murder charge down to manslaughter Tuesday. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the other two cases.

While responding to the attack on Baguley, police were advised that a woman had been badly beaten on the second floor of a Jarvis Avenue apartment, close to the first scene.

Officers found Ballantyne lying on the floor in a pool of blood, while her belongings were strewn around the hallway in front of a suite.

The attackers had pulled her pants down, exposed her underwear and left broken glass on the floor next to her head, said Carson.

Ballantyne was originally from Misipawistik Cree Nation. Her loved ones told the Free Press at the time she had been through hard times, including drug addiction, but had made positive strides in her life.

She had trauma to her head and was pronounced dead at 9 a.m.

Felix was asleep in his wheelchair in front of the Bell Hotel on Main Street, when the boys came upon him at 4:38 a.m., Carson said.

“Felix was attacked completely unprovoked by (the two co-accused),” said Carson. The boys, she said, punched him, pulled him from his wheelchair and dragged him to the ground, where they stomped on his head several times before pulling his pants down and stomping on his genitals.

The attack was recorded on surveillance video. The pair left with the victim’s pants and walked down Main Street, Carson said.

Felix suffered serious head injuries and was taken off life-support four days later.

A sister who travelled from Berens River First Nation to be at his bedside told the Free Press he had never harmed anyone and that he was quiet and well-liked. He lived in an apartment in the North End.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca