Man who was accessory to murder gets 27 months

Tammy Dahlin woke up every morning for nearly two years not knowing who murdered her son.

Thomas Wayne Peebles didn’t wield the gun that killed 28-year-old Michael Dahlin — that would be Matthew Andre Miles — but he helped cover the killer’s tracks.

“It has been 1,651 days to the day since there was a devastating knock on my door from two homicide detectives to tell me Michael was gone,” Dahlin told Peebles at a sentencing hearing Tuesday.

“You had a choice — you could have made the right decision, but you chose not to,” Dahlin said. “You’re not going to get what you deserve, not in my books. When you close your eyes every night, I hope the last thing you see is Michael’s face. I hope he haunts you.”

Michael Dahlin was shot in the chest at close range during a confrontation inside a Dufferin Avenue apartment, March 8, 2021.

Peebles, 34, pleaded guilty to accessory to murder after the fact and was sentenced by King’s Bench Justice Vic Toews to 27 months in prison.

Peebles admitted to covering Dahlin’s body with a blanket and removing blood-stained pieces of carpet from the apartment before Miles removed the body from the building and hid it in a recycling bin in the 500 block of Stella Avenue.

Miles, 34, and Peebles were both in custody on other charges when they were arrested for the killing in December 2022.

Defence lawyer Keenan Fonseca said Peebles had no prior knowledge Miles was going to shoot Dahlin. Fonseca said Peebles — under the influence of cocaine, meth and alcohol — feared Miles would turn the gun on him if he didn’t help him cover up the killing.

“It’s not a legal excuse, but there were pressures on him,” Fonseca said. “He indicates if he could change things, he would not have done that again.”

Prosecutor Daniel Chaput recommended Peebles be sentenced to 30 months in prison, a lighter than normal sentence that took into account the fragility of the Crown’s case. Had the case gone to trial, the Crown’s main witness — whose memory was compromised by drugs and alcohol the night of the killing — would have been reluctant to testify, which could have resulted in an acquittal, Chaput said.

Fonseca and co-counsel Matt Gould recommended Peebles, currently serving a 7½ year prison sentence for a home invasion committed after Dahlin was killed, be sentenced to an additional 18 months custody.

Toews said Peebles’ “peripheral involvement” in the killing justified a sentence in between the two recommendations.

“This is a criminal act he was involved in,” Toews said. “There is no question he knew what he was doing was wrong.”

Miles pleaded guilty last March to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years.

The roots of the murder reached back to September 2020 when Miles, Dahlin and another man were arrested and taken into custody on weapons charges.

While Dahlin was released “fairly quickly,” Miles remained in custody for months, leading him to believe Dahlin was a “rat” and had co-operated with police, Crown attorney Erin Dunsmore told court at Miles’ sentencing hearing.

“That suspicion festered within him, until coming to a head on March 8, 2021,” when Miles confronted Dahlin in the apartment.

Miles “didn’t like the answer that he got… and, as a result, shot (Dahlin) once at close range,” Dunsmore said.

Two days after Dahlin’s body was discovered, a plumber fixing water damage to the apartment “made certain observations about the state of the suite” and called police, Dunsmore said.

Police found evidence of “high-velocity blood spatter and blood transfer,” particularly in the bathroom, and evidence of a post-murder cleanup effort, Dunsmore said.

One of the witnesses told police Miles confessed to him one day after the killing. A year later, both men were being held at Milner Ridge Correctional Centre on unrelated charges when Miles again brought up the killing.

When the witness told Miles he “should stop talking about this, Mr. Miles said: ‘But I like to talk about it,’” Dunsmore said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca