Man sentenced to life in prison for 2012 slaying
WETASKIWIN The man who brutally killed a worker in his Camrose group home when he was 17 years old was sentenced Friday to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for seven years.
Travis Scheerschmidt, who could not previously be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was sentenced as an adult for the second-degree murder of Dianne McClements.
Jeff McClements, Dianne McClements’ son, said he was happy with the verdict.
“Knowing that possibly there’ll be closure for the people she loved, she’d be in a happy place,” he said. “I want everything to be a positive light for her.”
He said he is still absorbing the sentence and thinking only of his mother.
“Mom doesn’t get a say. Mom doesn’t get to be here to speak on her own behalf,” he said.
Crown prosecutor Ryan Pollard said his thoughts are with Dianne McClements’ family.
“It was a long, long process for them,” Pollard said. “The end of this stage gives them some sense of finality.”
The judge presiding over the case said in Wetaskiwin court Friday morning that a youth sentence would not “be of sufficient length to hold him accountable” for the crime.
The judge said he also wasn’t satisfied that “a youth sentence will provide reasonable assurance” that it would be safe for Scheerschmidt return to society.
The maximum youth sentence for second-degree murder would have been seven years.
Jeff McClements said he would take some time to recover from the lengthy judicial process and then start advocating for change in how youths are assigned to group homes and for increased protections for workers. Dianne McClements was working alone at the time of the murder.
“There will be a day when I’ll be pushing for more change,” he said.
Defence lawyer Kent Teskey argued last fall that his client is “too emotionally immature” to be sentenced as an adult.
McClements, 61, was killed in May 2012 when the youth cornered and stabbed her, beat her, and left her body on the floor of the Marler Supported Independent Living home before he fled. Scheerschmidt had lived there for more than a year.
There were bloody footprints around McClements’ body and police found a butcher knife in the kitchen sink and a bent paring knife on the living room floor.
Another teen living at the home found her body and called police.
Scheerschmidt had stabbed McClements with the smaller knife until the blade snapped off, he told one witness. Scheerschmidt confessed again when he stopped at a friend’s house to wash his clothes.
Police arrested him the next day at his mother’s house.
Scheerschmidt pleaded guilty in September 2014 to second-degree murder for the crime.