Man who murdered 15-year-old Alberta girl sentenced to life in prison
CBC
A man who murdered a 15-year-old girl in a small Northern Alberta community has received an automatic maximum life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
In April, Jason Alec Tallcree, 39, was found guilty in the July 2020 beating, sexual assault and first-degree murder of Roderica Ribbonleg.
Ribbonleg's remains were found hidden in a beaver burrow several days after she went missing from John D'Or Prairie, about 750 kilometres north of Edmonton.
In his decision Friday in Peace River, Alta., Court of King's Bench Justice Wayne Renke sentenced Tallcree to nine years for sexual interference and two years for offering an indignity to a body, to be served alongside the life sentence for first-degree murder.
"Miss Ribbonleg is no longer with us," Renke concluded. "She can't testify to what she felt in her last moments. I find beyond any doubt that she was terrified. She was severely psychologically damaged in her last moments, from the time the beating began until she was no longer conscious."
Renke found Tailcree's degree of blameworthiness to be very high.
"He purposefully interfered sexually with the person he knew was a child. His blameworthiness was compounded by his intentional physical attack on Ribbonleg. He sought to harm her through violence"
The justice said the victim impact statements left him with no doubt of the "substantial effect on many, many people by this offence."
The statements recalled a happy, playful girl; expressed fear and anger for other young relatives, and sorrow for the daughter, friend, sibling and schoolmate no longer with them..
Because murder carries an automatic life sentence without parole for 25 years, arguments earlier Friday focused on the sentences for sexual interference and the disposal of Ribbonleg's body.
Crown prosecutors James Sawa and Ryan Ziegler pressed for maximum sentences in both crimes —14 and five years respectively.
They noted Ribbonleg was a foster child and girl of Indigenous heritage subjected to extreme violence.
Aggressive patients and lack of security are making nurses feel unsafe in a rural Western Manitoba emergency union, says the Manitoba Nurses Union.
Saskatoon resident Delynne Bortis knew her commute to work Tuesday morning would be particularly difficult.
WARNING: This story contains details of abuse and intimate partner violence:
The amount of money it takes for people to earn a living wage has increased across the province, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The new owner of Ontario steelmaker Stelco says his company "will not disappoint the people of Hamilton and Nanticoke," where the business's major facilities are based.
A Winnipegger is warning others about an intricate scam she says she almost fell for.
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.