Crown seeks 4 1/2 years for woman convicted in slaying
A woman convicted in the fatal assault of another woman outside a Vancouver nightclub should receive a 4 1/2-year sentence in jail, a prosecutor argued Monday.
In July, Samantha Nadine Doolan, 30, pleaded guilty to the August 2016 manslaughter of Lauren Lindsay McLellan, 28, near the Caprice Nightclub in the Granville Street entertainment district.
Before the assault, the two women had been patrons of the Caprice and had come face-to-face in the bar area, exchanging words and pushing one another before being separated by male bystanders.
McLellan was escorted from the bar area and outside the club, and Doolan, also asked to leave, followed a few seconds later.
In his sentencing submissions, Crown counsel Geordie Proulx said that Doolan either punched or pushed McLellan to the ground and then attacked her again as she was on her back on the sidewalk.
He told Provincial Court Judge Frances Howard that Doolan kicked McLellan in the head, with the victim holding her arms up to defend herself during the attack. The kick turned out to be the fatal blow, said Proulx.
“This was not a mutual or consensual fight,” he told the judge. “This was an assault from the get-go.”
Proulx said the accused broke an old and commonly known rule of “never kick a person when they’re down.”
The prosecutor said the attack by Doolan, who was angry at being told to leave the premises, was determined, persistent, gratuitous and inexplicable.
After the assault, emergency responders found McLellan unresponsive and rushed her to hospital, where she died of her injuries the following day.
Doolan walked away from the club in the company of a friend and took a taxi to a residence near her home. She was later arrested by police.
Proulx cited a pre-sentence report that found that Doolan’s anger, which had resulted in numerous prior fights, came from holding in the abuse she suffered as a child for a long time. Doolan, an Aboriginal woman, suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a family member during a chaotic upbringing and began abusing alcohol at a young age.
The prosecutor said he was concerned that despite the counselling she had received, Doolan seemed to be blaming the victim and not taking responsibility for the offence.
In a victim-impact statement filed in court, part of which was read out by Proulx, Joanne McLellan, the victim’s mother, said that every moment of every day her daughter is in her heart and she misses her. She said that the world had lost a “beautiful soul” in her daughter.
The mom said that she and her husband, Burns McLellan, had an “abiding love and strength,” and with the support of their family and friends and an “amazing” community, would honour their daughter for the rest of their lives.
“I have always understood that sometimes bad things happen in life, but no one ever thinks it’s going to happen to them — and then it does. Even now I struggle with coming to terms with your senseless death, and I am not the only one,” the mom said in the statement addressed to her daughter.
In his victim-impact statement, the dad said that anger was a “draining” emotion and that he wanted to focus not on what happened, but on his life with his daughter, who he described as a “prolific writer” who wrote stories, littles sayings and some “very profound” thoughts.
“Lauren had planned a future that would include school, teaching, counselling and travel. She spent a great deal of her time talking to people about challenges.”