Winnipeg man found guilty of mass murder, fights court sheriffs after verdict

WINNIPEG – A Winnipeg man found guilty of mass murder in a rooming house took the verdict stoically Thursday but then began fighting the sheriffs in court.

Minutes after being convicted of five counts of second-degree murder by a jury, and after the jurors and Court of King’s Bench Justice Alain Huberdeau left the room and court was adjourned, Jamie Felix tried to talk to supporters in the courtroom gallery when sheriffs intervened.

Felix became visibly upset as they tried to pull him away.

“I just want to say something (to my friends),” Felix protested, and a melee ensued in which he punched a sheriff in the face, his shirt was ripped off and another sheriff threatened to pepper-spray him.

“Stop it, Jamie! Stop it!” the sheriffs shouted as they eventually subdued Felix and led him out in handcuffs and still shirtless down the law courts building hallway. 

The jurors returned with a verdict just hours after being sequestered to deliberate.

Audible sighs were heard in the packed courtroom as the guilty verdicts were read out. Felix showed no emotion at that time.

He had pleaded not guilty to the 2023 killings that occurred at a rooming house in the West Broadway building that Crown prosecutors said was a known “crack shack.” 

Court heard police were called to the multi-unit building early on Nov. 26, 2023, to find five people had been shot. Two victims were pronounced dead at the scene and three others died in hospital. 

The victims were identified as Crystal Beardy, 34; her sister Stephanie Beardy, 33; Melelek Lesikel, 29; Dylan Lavallee, 41; and Shawn Marko, 56.

Marko died last year after spending 18 months in hospital. Court heard from a medical expert that he died from pneumonia linked to being shot three times. 

Melissa Marko told reporters after the decision was read that she would always remember her brother as a good guy whose life was taken way too soon. 

The Marko family, along with relatives of the Beardy sisters, spent every day of the trial listening in the gallery, with both families saying it was difficult to hear the details of their loved ones’ final moments. 

It was an experience that tied the families together. 

“We’re bonded over this tragedy. We are united,” said Marko. 

Beverly Beardy said the family is still reeling over the deaths of her two daughters.

“It’s never going to be justice because he’s alive and I had to bury my daughters. But they were sisters in life, sisters in death, sisters forever,” she said. 

The jury heard conflicting theories about who pulled the trigger.

The Crown argued Felix was driven by paranoia after spending days drinking and smoking crack at the house. 

Crown prosecutor Chantal Boutin told court Felix became uncomfortable at the home and believed people were acting strangely. He tried to ask for more information from his father and brother, who were also in the suite, but received no answers, said Boutin. 

Court heard Felix’s father and brother were associated with a gang that operated the drug den in the rooming house, but that Felix had no gang ties himself. 

Felix’s brother provided the man with a bulletproof vest and a handgun, which led Felix to grow concerned he was being used as “muscle” because of his military background. 

Accounts from those closest to Felix detailed a loving person who took pride in his military training and was in college to further his education. When Felix’s twin brother, Johnathen, died in a drug deal gone wrong, he turned to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain, Mary Felix said about her son.

Felix’s former girlfriend of three years testified that Felix confessed to the killings and admitted that he tried to shoot himself with the same gun afterward, but there weren’t any bullets left.

Felix’s lawyer, however, pointed to Felix’s late father as the trigger man. Theodore Mariash suggested to the jury that Felix’s father was intent on robbing the suite and planned to set up his son to take the fall. 

The trial heard that the father died in January.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 5, 2026.