‘I committed a heinous act’: former principal pleads guilty to two counts of murder

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This article was published 16/03/2020 (2191 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As principal of Sagkeeng Anicinabe High School, Claude Guimond was recognized as a respected pillar of his community.

Dressed in grey jail sweats, his legs in shackles, Guimond took on a new title in a Winnipeg courtroom Monday: convicted killer.

Guimond, 55, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in the February 2017 shooting deaths of Jody Brown, 43, and Steven Chevrefils, 35. The drunken act of vigilantism, court was told, was prompted by the victims’ alleged involvement in the local drug trade.

“I sat in my cell last night and struggled to put words to paper, but true sincerity and true remorse can’t be scripted,” Guimond told a court gallery occupied by members of both his victims’ families and his own.

“I know I have deprived two good families of their family members… I have deprived my family, too,” he said. “If I could take that night back, I would take it back in a second. I committed a heinous act.”

Crown and defence lawyers jointly recommended Guimond be sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 14 years.

Queen’s Bench Justice Brenda Keyser gave no signal she intended to depart from the recommendation, but adjourned sentencing so she could provide a written decision.

Guimond wasn’t arrested until December 2019, nearly two years after the killings. Police initially arrested another man and later his girlfriend, Guimond’s daughter. Charges against both were dropped.

Court heard Guimond had been drinking when he blackened his face, donned camouflage clothing and armed himself with an assault rifle before heading to Brown’s St. Georges home, 150 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, where several people had been consuming drugs.

Guimond confronted the two victims in the basement, where there was a marijuana grow operation. Guimond shot Brown once in the chest and Chevrefils twice in the head and chest. One of the bullets ricocheted through the basement ceiling, grazing a woman in the head.

“I can tell you there were definitely drugs being sold from that house… and I can tell you both victims at the time had drugs in their systems,” including cocaine and methamphetamine, Crown attorney Chris Vanderhooft told Keyser.

“What we don’t know is what in fact (Guimond’s) plan was,” Vanderhooft said. “Was there planning and deliberation, or was this simply an event that went terribly wrong?”

After a lengthy investigation, police surreptitiously obtained a sample of Guimond’s DNA, matching it to bullet fragments and shell casings found at the scene.

Court heard Guimond was deeply troubled by the impact of illegal drugs on his community, including his own daughters, and wanted to “put a scare” into the two victims.

“It’s a tragedy of life that good people for good reasons in their own minds do bad things,” said Guimond’s lawyer, Saul Simmonds.

Guimond was frustrated by what he saw as inaction on the part of RCMP to deal with the drug problem in his community, Simmonds said.

Vanderhooft rejected any attempt to blame police as “nonsense.”

“What Mr. Guimond did that night in confronting those individuals is nothing short of vigilantism,” he said. “This is simply an individual who after a few days of drinking… took it into their head to go there and confront (the victims). It should never have happened and was utterly preventable.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca