Conviction ‘a weight off my shoulders’
Victim’s family applauds verdict in 2006 Whyte Avenue slaying
After a seven-year stretch of sleepless nights waiting for a conviction in the 2006 Whyte Avenue stabbing death of Dylan McGillis, his family erupted with relief and joy in court Friday morning.
When Cleophas Decoine-Zuniga was found guilty of manslaughter, two dozen of McGillis’s family and friends burst into applause. Outside court, they wept, hugged and laughed all at the same time.
“It was like a weight coming off my shoulders,” said Marlene Beres, McGillis’s mother, as she was surrounded by family clad in T-shirts with a smiling picture of McGillis. “I’m happy, but it’s bittersweet happiness. It’s a good day. It’s a very good day.”
Decoine-Zuniga wa s charged in June 2011, more than five years after McGillis was fatally stabbed in front of numerous witnesses. Those years were the darkest for Beres because she had no one to blame for her son’s death, she said, no accused to direct her grief and anger toward. It was like screaming at a blank wall. At times, she feared the case would remain unsolved.
Still, the McGillis family worked tirelessly to find information before Decoine-Zuniga was charged. They put up hundreds of posters, created a website to chronicle the case, often spoke to media and investigators and travelled the highway from their Lloydminster home countless times.
“You do it for your child, for Dylan,” Beres said. “Anyone will do whatever they have to for their child.”
Now, after a month of living in an Edmonton hotel while attending Decoine-Zuniga’s trial, McGillis’s family will go home to Lloydminster with a sense of justice.
In the prisoner’s box, 26-year-old Decoine-Zuniga nodded as Court of Queen’s Bench Justice John Gill told court he didn’t believe his evidence and concluded that he’d stomped McGillis, 20, as a friend stabbed him in the midsection.
Decoine-Zuniga fled while McGillis’s friends covered him with coats as he lay bleeding and shivering on the sidewalk. McGillis died in the early hours of Nov. 19, 2006, as a result of the brawl between his friends and Decoine-Zuniga’s.
It was supposed to be a celebratory time for the young man from Lloydminster who had just learned his girlfriend was pregnant.
Gill said “nothing in the evidence raises a reasonable doubt” that Decoine-Zuniga had truthfully admitted his crime to undercover officers, then lied when he testified that confession was false.
Gill found that Decoine-Zuniga was so eager to join the criminal gang that undercover officers pretended to recruit him into that he wouldn’t have lied when they asked him to admit crimes to gain trust.
“The accused knew it would be totally counterproductive to lie,” Gill said as he read his decision. “Mr. Decoine-Zuniga was very happy in the organization and believed he was doing well.”
In an Edson hotel room with officers in April 2011, Decoine-Zuniga shared what he called his “top, top secret.”
“Like, between us, the toppest for me would be murder. I can’t even remember his name. That kid who died four years ago. That was me and my buddy who did that,” he told officers in a taped conversation played in court.
“I don’t even remember clearly what happened, all I remember is him hitting one of my friends.
“And I just ran in there, started beating him, and my buddy gutted him. And then I just kept stomping him, you know, while he got stabbed.”
In testimony, Decoine-Zuniga admitted he was involved in the melee, but claimed he hadn’t touched McGillis or witnessed the stabbing.
Decoine-Zuniga is the only person ever charged in McGillis’s death.
A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.