Wife sentenced to 42 months for fatal stabbing

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This article was published 21/11/2013 (2115 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Manitoba woman will serve another three years in prison for the unintentionally fatal stabbing of her husband, who was run over by two drunk drivers as he walked a darkened rural road to get help for the injuries she caused to him.

Lois Cook, 39, was sentenced to 42 months in prison for killing her common-law Dave Hudson, 32, during a drunken argument on Berens River First Nation on May 31, 2010. After time served was factored in, she has just over three years left in custody.

In a lengthy sentencing decision issued this morning, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Joan McKelvey clearly sided with prosecutors that Cook, a mother of four from a tragic background, needed to spend years in jail if she was to try and turn her troubled life around.

McKelvey also said the circumstances surrounding Hudson's death and the resulting police investigation were "most unusual." Crown attorney Dan Angus previously described them as being like "a law-school exam."

The Berens River community was celebrating treaty days and Cook, Hudson and a number of others had been partying and drinking at a home. At some point in the evening, the couple got into a private dispute with no witnesses. Cook stabbed Hudson twice in the bicep, leaving two three-millimetre stab wounds.

The intoxicated victim appeared fine right after, despite his bleeding arm. He even spoke briefly to other party guests — before walking up the road to a nearby relative's house to get a ride to the nursing station.

The Crown says he collapsed in the roadway "likely due to the loss of blood." Court heard he was run over by a drunk driver, and then soon after run over again by another drunk driver. Only the second collision was witnessed — by RCMP who were on their way to investigate the stabbing call.

The wounds Hudson suffered from being run over were "extremely dramatic" and he was covered with "significant road rash." Believing it was the collision they saw that killed him, RCMP charged the 27-year-old driver with impaired driving causing death.

It wasn't until the pathologist took a second look, before deciding the cause of death, that he found Hudson actually died of blood loss from a microscopic nick to a major artery and not from being run over. The drunk driver who was charged later pleaded guilty to impaired driving. The first driver was not charged because RCMP didn't learn he had struck Hudson until days after he died.

"This was a senseless loss of life," McKelvey said.

James.turner@freepress.mb.ca