Twelve years for 2019 shooting death fuelled by meth

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This article was published 23/06/2021 (1635 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, after admitting to fatally shooting another man in the face with a homemade gun.

Benny Hansen was charged with second-degree murder, but agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in the killing of Dexter Cortavista DeJarisco, 31, in 2019.

Court heard Hansen was armed with an “improvised firing device” or “zip gun” when he and another man arrived at DeJarisco’s Burrows Avenue home.

The firearm “shot 12-gauge shotgun shells, and it was loaded,” Crown attorney Manoja Moorthy told Queen’s Bench Justice Herbert Rempel, reading from an agreed statement of facts.

Hansen told a woman in the home “something was going to happen” before becoming involved in a physical struggle with DeJarisco in the living room.

The woman had retreated to a bathroom when “in the course of the struggle, (Hansen) was holding the zip gun when it was fired,” Moorthy said. “The pellets from the shotgun shell hit the victim in the face.”

Court was not given a motive for the attack.

Hansen and the other man left the house, then returned a short time later and called 911, before leaving again.

DeJarisco died a week later in hospital.

Court heard Hansen had been using meth “all morning” prior to the attack.

The death of a witness prior to a one-month-long scheduled trial and possible questions about the “functionality” of the gun weakened the Crown’s case against Hansen.

“It’s one thing to plead guilty when the evidence against you is overwhelming,” said defence lawyer Martin Glazer. “Here, Mr. Hansen has pleaded guilty despite the weaknesses and problems with the Crown’s case.”

Rempel credited Hansen for time served, reducing his remaining sentence to 81/2 years.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca