N.B. man who fatally stabbed fellow inmate Calvin Kenny gets 22-year sentence
CBC
A New Brunswick man who killed a fellow inmate while serving a murder sentence expressed remorse to his victim's family, but said he did it to protect himself.
"Nobody knows what goes on in there but the guys in there," Brandon Blake Colford, 27, said during his sentencing hearing Wednesday in Miramichi, in eastern New Brunswick.
"I had to do what I had to do for my own safety, and for that I'm sorry I guess, but it is what it is."
Colford, originally charged with second-degree murder, pleaded guilty in September to the lesser charge of manslaughter in the Feb. 18, 2019, stabbing death of Calvin Clifford Kenny.
Colford and Kenny, a 27-year-old from Fermeuse, N.L., were inmates at the Atlantic Institution in Renous. The maximum security prison is about 30 kilometres southwest of Miramichi.
Colford admits using a 20-centimetre shank, a weapon made in the prison, to stab Kenny more than 40 times.
Court of King's Bench Justice Darrell Stephenson sentenced Colford to 22 years in prison, saying his actions have no place in society and must be denounced.
The sentence was a joint recommendation from Colford's defence lawyer and the Crown prosecutor. It is near the high end of potential manslaughter sentences.
Colford pleaded guilty to manslaughter shortly before his jury trial on a second-degree murder charge was set to start.
Both lawyers declined to comment after the judge issued the decision Wednesday afternoon.
Kenny was serving a sentence of 12½ years in Renous. He was one of four men charged in the death of Steven Miller in Conception Bay South, N.L., in 2016.
Colford, from Blackville, was serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 15 years when he killed Kenny. Colford had pleaded guilty to stabbing 49-year-old Michael Mark Ryan more than 50 times in Miramichi on April 23, 2016.
According to an agreed statement of facts given to Stephenson, Colford and Kenny were in the same unit at the prison with other inmates from Newfoundland, who considered Kenny their leader.
The statement says Colford claimed Kenny "and his gang threatened to harm him because they alleged he had snitched concerning an incident that had occurred in the kitchen the day prior to the homicide."
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.