‘The grief is like nothing I have ever experienced,’ murder victim’s sister tells court

Cory Roulette was a gentle and kind man who “wouldn’t hurt a fly” and never looked for trouble, family members told a Winnipeg court Tuesday.

But trouble found the 38-year-old man, his life senselessly snuffed out by three strangers following a heated exchange with an 11-year-old boy.

“The grief is like nothing I have ever experienced,” sister Stefanie Menjivar-Noriega said in a victim impact statement read out in court. “What happened to him is not right. He deserves to be here.”

Ramona Harper, 23, and brother Raoul Harper, 20, have pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the August 2023 killing, while their 26-year-old cousin Kyle Harper, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Lawyers for the Crown and defence are jointly recommending a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years for Kyle Harper. The Crown is recommending eight-year sentences for Ramona Harper and Raoul Harper.

The three offenders sat in separate prisoner’s boxes, their backs to the court gallery, where several of Roulette’s family members sat, all of them wearing T-shirts emblazoned with his picture.

As Sheriff’s officers escorted Ramona Harper into court, she mouthed the words “I love you” to her brother, seated in an adjacent prisoner’s box.

An agreed statement of facts previously provided to court says Ramona Harper and another woman were walking past Roulette’s Furby Street apartment building at about 11 p.m. when Harper kicked over garbage cans, attracting the attention of an 11-year-old boy who was visiting Roulette and standing on his second-floor balcony.

The boy and Harper yelled at each other, and the boy threatened to shoot Harper.

Harper left, saying, “I’m going to get my brothers and shoot the place up.”

Ramona returned to her Langside Street home a short walk away and “incited” Kyle and Raoul to accompany her to the apartment building and “violently confront” the occupant of the second-floor suite.

Kyle was armed with a loaded, sawed-off rifle and Raoul with a collapsible baton when the trio broke the door open to Roulette’s suite.

Once inside, Raoul beat Roulette’s body and face with the baton before Kyle Harper shot him once in the chest.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that but for Ramona Harper, Cory Roulette would be alive today,” Crown attorney Jennifer Comack told Court of King’s Bench Justice Sadie Bond. “Ramona was the catalyst, Kyle was the shooter and Raoul was the extra muscle.”

The attackers fled and a neighbour called 911. Roulette was taken to Health Sciences Centre where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Raoul Harper and Ramona Harper have no prior criminal records. At the time of the killing, Kyle Harper was on bail for multiple firearm offences and was wearing an ankle monitor as a condition of his release.

Security video showed Kyle Harper leaving Roulette’s apartment building shortly after the killing “wearing a GPS ankle monitor and carrying an object that resembled a firearm,” the agreed statement of facts says.

Data retrieved from the ankle monitor placed Kyle Harper in the general vicinity of the killing.

Ramona Harper was one of two suspects a tenant identified as having seen outside Roulette’s suite just prior to the killing.

Court heard all three offenders had upbringings stained by poverty, dislocation and abuse.

Ramona Harper and Raoul Harper have served the equivalent of nearly three years in custody.

Raoul Harper’s lawyer, Scott Newman, recommended he be sentenced to an additional two years less a day in jail, arguing a penitentiary sentence would expose him to dangerous gang influences and derail any hope of rehabilitation.

Tara Walker, Ramona Harper’s lawyer, urged Bond to to sentence her client to no more than six years in prison.

Newman and Walker both argued their client’s moral culpability for the crime was reduced by their level of intoxication at the time of the killing.

All three offenders offered brief apologies to Roulette’s family.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose a family member like that,” Ramona Harper said. “It breaks my heart. It makes me want to be a better person. I am so sorry.”

Rachel Roulette said she hopes to one day be able to forgive her brother’s killers.

“I wish they could understand my pain,” she said in a victim impact statement provided to court. “I hope they will learn from their mistakes.”

Bond will sentence the three offenders at a later date.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca