Judge admits ‘unease’ as youth sentenced to seven years for killings

A Winnipeg man who was 15 years old at the time he killed two people in separate, unprovoked attacks has escaped an adult sentence of life in prison.

In a decision delivered Thursday, King’s Bench Justice Sarah Inness sentenced the now 18-year-old man to seven years custody and conditional supervision in the community, the maximum term allowed under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The teen previously pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in the Aug. 22, 2022, killings of Danielle Dawn Ballantyne, 36, and Marvin William Felix, 54.

Inness rejected a Crown motion that the teen be sentenced as an adult, ruling prosecutors did not show he had acted with the maturity of an adult.

The teen “was not living and acting in a manner consistent with adult functioning,” Inness said. “He was a child surviving on the streets in difficult circumstances with the help of others.”

The teen has continued to act out violently against other youths while in custody at the Manitoba Youth Centre, resulting in his segregation and staff labeling him as “unmanageable.”

The judge said the teen’s behaviour in custody is evidence of his dangerousness, not his maturity, and expressed concern about his prospects for rehabilitation.

“I must state I have come to my decision in this case despite significant unease,” Inness said. “My discomfort stems not from any doubts about the conclusions I have reached, but from strong concerns that (he) will not be rehabilitated within the length of the sentence I have no choice but to impose.”

A now 19-year-old co-accused was sentenced as an adult last October to life in prison with no chance of parole for seven years. He pleaded guilty to an additional count of manslaughter in the slaying of a third victim that same night, 51-year-old Troy Baguley.

The two teens had absconded from their Wolseley-area group home prior to the killings. Court has heard police were responding to the attack on Baguley on Main Street when they learned a woman had been badly beaten on the second floor of a nearby Jarvis Avenue apartment.

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 teens had pulled her pants down and exposed her underwear. Broken glass was on the floor next to her head. No surveillance tape captured the attack on the woman, who was pronounced dead hours later.

After the attack on Ballantyne, the two 15 year olds made their way to a lane off Main Street near the Bell Hotel, where they came across Felix sleeping in his wheelchair.

Security video showed the teens tossing Felix from his wheelchair before they punched, kicked and stomped on his head. They pulled him into the roadway and beat him further in the head and genitals.

Felix died in hospital days later.

Both teens have been diagnosed with FASD and ADHD.

Inness said security video showed the teen in court Thursday was clearly intoxicated and followed the lead of his co-accused, who showed no such signs of impairment.

“Based on the whole of the evidence before me, I conclude (his) intellectual and cognitive deficits… are connected to his involvement in the offences and his moral blameworthiness,” Inness said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca