Breaches lead to return to custody for man who murdered mother

A former Fort Macleod man who served a four-year sentence for killing his mother with an axe when he was a teenager is back in custody after failing to obey conditions imposed on him when he was released more than two years ago.

The man, who is now 25 years old but can’t be identified because he was a youth when he killed his mother in May 2009, was in Lethbridge court Friday where he appeared by closed-circuit TV from the Calgary Remand Centre.

Court was told that upon the man’s release in 2014, he was ordered to get a job and not leave Calgary. However, last Monday he left work early then drove to Red Deer with his girlfriend to help another friend in distress.

It wasn’t the first time he breached release conditions. In June he smoked marijuana, and in September he associated with specific individuals with whom he was not to have any contact.

For each breach his release was suspended for 48 hours and he was returned to custody.

The Crown said Friday that the third breach required another custodial term, but recommended a longer suspension of the man’s release privileges.

The judge agreed and ordered the man to serve another 21 days in custody, in addition to the time he has already spent in custody since his arrest Monday.

Duty counsel, however, did not agree with the Crown’s recommendation, and told court the breaches were relatively minor and didn’t involve committing other offences. He suggested the accused learned his lesson from the previous two breaches, because he hadn’t repeated them.

“He made a really bad choice,” Richard Dalby said. “He is getting the message as he goes.”

The convicted killer was 17 years old when he attacked his mother with an axe and knife in their home in Fort Macleod. He bludgeoned his mother in the back of the head six times with an axe, stabbed her in the neck and chest several times with a knife, rolled her into a blanket and tossed her into the basement.

He pleaded guilty in the fall of 2009 to second-degree murder and was sentenced to four years custody followed by three years of community supervision, and placed in an intensive rehabilitation and supervision program aimed at lowering his risk to re-offend.

His supervised release is scheduled to conclude in September 2017.