‘Intentional, senseless and violent’: teens get maximum youth sentence for fatal beating

Two Winnipeg teens who stabbed and beat a stranger to death during a mugging have been sentenced to seven years in custody and conditional supervision in the community — the maximum youth sentence for second-degree murder.

Steven Loonfoot, 45, died in hospital following an attack outside a Manitoba Housing complex on Qu’Appelle Avenue on Feb. 24, 2025.

“This was an intentional, senseless and violent crime on a stranger… (and) there was an element of planning involved,” said provincial court Judge Rachel Rusen.

The 17-year-old offenders cannot be named under terms of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The Free Press is identifying them by their first initials — C and M.

Court heard the then-16-year-old boys were captured on security video propping open multiple entrances to the building at about 10:30 p.m. when they saw Loonfoot at the back of the building and demanded his belongings.

M pulled a large knife from his waistband and C produced a can of bear spray, at which point Loonfoot ran away.

The teens caught up to Loonfoot and beat him about the head and body. M stabbed Loonfoot four times and C kicked him as he lay on the ground.

“Both (M) and (C) rifled through the victim’s pockets while he was incapacitated on the ground,” Crown attorney Sarah Thiessen told court reading from an agreed statement of facts.

“This was an intentional, senseless and violent crime on a stranger.”

The teens started to walk away when C saw Loonfoot was still moving and stomped on his head eight times.

The teens fled back inside the building, where police, responding to a 911 call, took M into custody a short time later. He was in possession of a machete later found to have Loonfoot’s blood on it.

Loonfoot was taken to Health Sciences Centre where he died from a stab wound to the heart.

C was arrested at his group home later that same day.

While in police custody prior to his arrest, M asked officers: “So, is it like first-degree (murder) or what? How long am I going away?”

Both teens were on bail at the time of the killing and wanted by police for breaching conditions of their release.

Loonfoot was a kind person quick to help anyone in trouble, his mother Harriet Loonfoot told court.

“Burying a child changes you in many ways no one can understand,” she said. “It carves something permanent in your soul. I now live with a wound that will never close. The love has nowhere to go.”

“Burying a child changes you in many ways no one can understand… I now live with a wound that will never close. The love has nowhere to go.”

Rusen agreed to a recommendation by prosecutors and defence lawyers Chris McCoy and Marc Zurbuchen that the teens be allowed to serve their sentences under an Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision order.

The program allows participants access to one-on-one counselling, occupational therapy, tutoring and other specialized services at a cost of $100,000 a year.

Participants in the program must be guilty of a serious violent offence, suffer from a mental illness or disorder, and have a treatment program that case workers believe will reduce their risk to the public.

Court heard the teens, both of whom were made permanent wards of Child and Family Services at an early age, are in the borderline range or lower in terms of intellectual functioning and have been diagnosed with a host of mental disorders including fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.

Both teens have ties to gangs and prior convictions for assault and other offences.

According to a 2024 pre-sentence report prepared for M following a conviction for assault with a weapon, he told a probation officer: “It was just a stabbing, I didn’t kill someone.”

“Essentially, violence appears to be normalized for him,” Thiessen said.

“There is hope for these young men.”

Since being taken into custody, both teens have taken part in rehabilitative programming, shown greater insight into their actions and expressed genuine remorse, court was told.

“(Loonfoot) and his family didn’t deserve that,” M said, according to a pre-sentence report. “It happened for no reason, just because I wanted something.”

Rusen said she accepted the expressions of remorse as “sincere and heartfelt.”

Rusen ordered that the teens serve one year in closed custody, three years in open custody, allowing for temporary supervised absences, and three years under conditional supervision in the community.

“There is hope for these young men,” Rusen said. “I am hopeful and satisfied this IRCS sentence will reduce their risk of reoffending and hold each accountable for their actions.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca