Youth who smashed skull of Calgary man offers teary apology to dead man's family
Client: anonymous (young offender)
Charge: murder
The Calgary teen who bludgeoned a vulnerable drug addict to death with a hammer sobbed Wednesday as he offered his victim’s family an apology.
The now 18-year-old, who was 15 at the time he and his then-girlfriend murdered Jason Greyeyes, called the killing a “horrific event.”
“I feel horrible for Jason’s family,” he told Justice Bryan Mahoney, before turning to the dead man’s parents, brother and niece seated in the courtroom gallery.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, breaking down in tears.
“Jason did not deserve what occurred to him at all,” he said through sobs.
“I am truly sorry for being involved in this horrific event.”
The offender, who can’t be identified because he was a youth at the time of the crime, pleaded guilty last December to second-degree murder in the Aug. 10, 2018, killing of Greyeyes.
He had been charged with first-degree murder.
Mahoney accepted a joint submission from Crown prosecutor William Tran and defence lawyer Alain Hepner for the maximum youth sentence for second-degree murder of four years custody and three years intensive community supervision.
At the lawyers’ request, the Court of Queen’s Bench judge gave the offender two years’ credit for the more than 30 months he’s already spent behind bars, leaving him 24 more months of custody to serve.
Tran said the sentence, part of an Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision order, would assist in the killer’s eventual reintegration to society.
Before getting submissions from the two lawyers, Mahoney heard victim-impact statements from the dead man’s father and widow, who attended the hearing via a video link.
“The pain my children will endure knowing that they will never see their father again is unimaginable,” Alicia Greyeyes wrote in a statement read in by Tran.
“My children lost two parents that day, not just their father, but their mom as well as I will never be the same again.”
Greyeyes’ father, James, a retired police officer, said the loss of his son was a blow to the entire family.
“The death of Jason Greyeyes . . . has left a huge void in our family,” he wrote.
According to a statement of agreed facts read in by Tran in December, the teen and his girlfriend, then 16, had gone to an isolated area at the south end of the city for a cocaine purchase.
Although the pair had discussed killing him, there was no concrete plan to do it that night.
When Greyeyes got out to have a cigarette, the youth “suddenly saw an opportunity to kill (him),” Tran told court.
He approached the victim from behind and crushed his skull with a hammer.
Greyeyes was struck twice more in the head before the offender and his girlfriend suffocated him with a garbage bag.
In an attempt to prevent the body from being identified, the male also smashed out several of the victim’s teeth.
The girl, now 18, was handed a similar sentence last August.
Source: Calgary Herald