Intellectually disabled kidnapper who left teen victim traumatized sent to prison

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This article was published 05/03/2025 (233 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An intellectually disabled man who randomly kidnapped a teen girl at knifepoint on a rural road southeast of Winnipeg nearly six years ago, leaving her with lasting psychological scars, has been sentenced to a federal prison term.

The 2019 abduction, which required a lengthy investigation that a senior Manitoba RCMP inspector called “frustrating,” resulted in an arrest in January 2023.

Hercules Nicholas Chief, in his mid-20s, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and assault with a weapon for the June 23, 2019 abduction in which a then-16-year-old girl was kidnapped while walking her dog on an isolated rural road, near her family’s home in Landmark.

He did not know the teen and no apparent motive has been identified.

Provincial court Judge Larry Allen sentenced Chief to three years in prison, less time served, last week.

“It is aggravating that Mr. Chief opportunistically preyed on a young female who was vulnerable, in an isolated area with no available support,” said Allen in his written decision. “It is aggravating this offence has understandably had a devastating, long-lasting effect on the victim’s emotional well-being.”

The victim had left her home at about 7 a.m. and walked down a stretch of Ste. Anne’s Road near Provincial Road 206, when Chief, driving a pickup truck, stopped and asked if she needed a ride.

Chief forced her into the truck, cutting her hand with a knife he was brandishing, Allen said.

“After the child was in the car, Mr. Chief drove off and at some point, said to the victim, ‘don’t worry I won’t hurt you,’” wrote the judge.

“The child was in the truck for approximately eight minutes, at which time the vehicle slowed due to rough road conditions, and she was able to jump out of the vehicle and run through a field to a farmhouse.”

The farmer called RCMP and told them the victim had arrived at his home “hysterical and bleeding from a cut to her hand,” Allen said.

The victim gave Mounties a detailed description of her assailant, but it took several years of police work to firmly identify Chief.

A fingerprint found during the initial investigation, which couldn’t be identified at the time, showed up in a national database in February 2022.

The fingerprint belonged to a witness, whose interview, as well as DNA evidence, phone tracking and a police lineup led Mounties and the victim to identify Chief as the kidnapper.

“The victim … attended court and spoke about how significantly affected her life has been from this crime,” said Allen. “She told the court that she has become an overwhelmingly anxious person and that she has lost a sense of trust in all people.”

Allen said Crown prosecutor Valerie Hebert’s ask of five years in prison was too high, finding Chief’s intellectual handicap, the racism he faced in his childhood in a white school system and the fact he never knew his birth parents diminished his responsibility.

But his serious crimes require a significant period behind bars, said the judge.

Chief had been taken into care immediately after his birth by Steinbach-area foster parents, with whom he remained until he was 19. His foster mother died in 2017, which the judge said resulted in him turning to intoxicants to cope with his grief.

Chief was exposed to solvents, alcohol and intravenous drugs that his birth mother was using while pregnant.

A psychological report, conducted when he was 14 in 2013, found his full-scale IQ to be in the extreme below-average range of 57 to 68. The average is considered to fall between 85 and 115.

The school psychologist who prepared the report found Chief to display a “mild intellectual disability,” Allen said. He was also diagnosed with partial fetal alcohol syndrome at the time, though the judge found the old diagnosis not adequate enough to consider as evidence.

Chief was going through a marital breakdown at the time of the offence and claimed that he was drinking and using drugs heavily, particularly on the day of the crime.

Chief had been directed to an alternative justice program for men with intellectual disabilities at a ranch in southeast Manitoba, where he was described as “doing phenomenal” and maintaining sobriety while awaiting court proceedings.

Defence lawyer Andrew McKelvey-Gunson argued for a conditional sentence of two years to allow Chief to continue to “thrive in his present circumstances” at the ranch.

He also argued that Chief’s intellectual limitations made him less responsible for the crimes.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca