27-year-old admits to participating in beating
Man was one of four who swarmed victim over a debt allegedly owed to a sex worker
Austin Southworth, 27, pleaded guilty to manslaughter Friday for his role in violently beating a man with a baseball bat and leaving him to die in an Edmonton ditch over a debt owed to a sex worker.
“Brad did not deserve this,” Southworth said as he read an apology in Court of Queen’s Bench.
Brad MacDonald, 37, was found dead near Stony Plain Road and Winterburn Road on April 10, 2016.
According to an agreed statement of facts, MacDonald, who worked on oilfield camps across Canada, was in Edmonton for work when he checked into the Lodge Motor Inn, 18125 Stony Plain Rd., on April 6, 2016.
There, he met a sex worker staying at the hotel whom he recognized from the Maritimes. On April 8, the pair stayed together in MacDonald’s room where she offered sexual favours in exchange for cocaine.
After spending the next day together doing drugs, the woman became agitated when MacDonald was unable to pay her.
She called a man and asked for help to leave MacDonald’s room and get what she felt she was owed.
That man reached out to three friends for help, including Southworth, preparing for a fight based on the prostitute’s exaggerated claims, court heard.
After drinking and doing drugs, including crystal meth, the four men hatched a plan to lure MacDonald into Southworth’s truck under the pretence of going to a party.
On the night of April 9, MacDonald climbed into the back of the truck and the men drove around before stopping in the ditch.
When MacDonald tried to run, the men caught him and beat him violently, punching and kicking MacDonald.
At some point, Southworth began beating MacDonald with a baseball bat, hitting him in the head, court heard.
The men fled in the truck, but turned around and went back to steal MacDonald’s wallet.
MacDonald was reportedly still breathing when they robbed him and left him to die. No one called for help.
The men took off in the truck again, wiping down the baseball bat before tossing it out the window.
A passerby found MacDonald’s bloodied body the next day.
Investigators later located the baseball bat a few kilometres away; MacDonald’s DNA was on it.
A beer can recovered near the scene had Southworth’s fingerprint on it.
An autopsy outlined numerous injuries MacDonald suffered in the attack, including multiple fractures to his skull and defensive wounds on his hands.
In a victim impact statement read aloud by close family friend Marina Munroe, MacDonald’s youngest brother of “what were four” described MacDonald as a baseball coach, avid outdoorsman and fishing buddy who loved his family, including his teenage daughter.
Ryan MacDonald said his brother was a hard worker with goals — having saved his money to purchase land and build a house near the family home in Nova Scotia, giving two of his brothers twohectare parcels each so the family would always stay close — and any punishment “will never be enough.”
MacDonald’s mother, Charlene MacDonald, wept as her statement was read describing how when she went to the spot where MacDonald died, she “heard my son pleading for his life.”
The Crown prosecutor said the “callousness” of the crime warranted a stiff sentence, recommending between 10 and 12 years in prison with credit for time Southworth has already spent in the Edmonton Remand Centre.
The defence argued Southworth had been working to improve his life behind bars, has taken advantage of every program offered at the remand centre and called for a lesser sentence of eight years.
Southworth is expected to appear in court next Tuesday for sentencing.