Kwasi Benjamin gets life in prison for strangling girlfriend
Kwasi Benjamin will have to serve 14 years of his life sentence for the second-degree murder of Nellie Angutiguluk before he’ll be eligible for parole, Superior Court Judge Pierre Labrie ruled Wednesday.
Angutiguluk was found strangled to death in the bedroom of the couple’s Côte-des-Neiges apartment on May 18, 2015. Benjamin had called 911, claiming Angutiguluk had hanged herself. A jury found Benjamin guilty of second-degree murder last February.
At the time of the murder, Benjamin, now 32, was under court order not to contact the victim because he had been charged with violently assaulting her in January 2014.
Delivering his sentencing decision, Labrie called the case a “tragic illustration of domestic violence” and listed several aggravating circumstances to explain his decision to add four years to the minimum 10 required to be served before a second-degree murderer can be considered for parole.
Among those aggravating circumstances was the violent and brutal nature of the murder. The judge cited expert testimony to the effect that death by ligature strangulation is not instantaneous, but can take four to 10 minutes of applied force to cause death. He added there were bruises and fresh wounds on the victim’s face, head and both arms.
Angutiguluk’s death made orphans of her three children, aged nine, 10 and 11, Labrie added. The judge also stressed the victim’s extreme vulnerability. Angutiguluk, who was 29 when she died, had been living on the streets of Montreal, far from her Inuit community of Puvirnituq in Nunavik, when she moved in with Benjamin.
Angutiguluk’s children live with the victim’s mother, who said in an impact statement to the court that she is concerned her grandchildren will not receive the help they need to cope with their mother’s murder, as these types of services are scarce in Nunavik.
The judge noted that mental health experts who examined Benjamin described him as having a severe alcohol problem, but added that he was violent toward women even independent of alcohol consumption.
They concluded that because of certain personality traits, such as narcissism, rigid thinking, difficulty understanding other people’s feelings, Benjamin would be unlikely to benefit from rehabilitation programs offered in prison. His refusal to respect court orders and conditions in the past was another point against him, the judge said.
A cousin of the victim, Lisa Koperqualuk, told the judge the victim also had an alcohol dependency problem. Koperqualuk, a co-founder of the Saturviit Inuit Women’s Association of Nunavik, said Angutiguluk’s death highlights the need in Montreal for “wet shelters” for homeless people who are inebriated.
She said women like Angutiguluk, who are struggling with addiction, often become victims of violence and abuse when they cannot find a safe place to sleep.
The judge also noted that Angutiguluk was financially dependent on Benjamin, was physically much smaller than him and was heavily intoxicated at the time of the attack.