Brawl breaks out at fundraiser for man killed in brawl

• Two men have been sentenced for getting into a bar brawl at a fundraiser to help cover the funeral costs of a friend who died trying to stop a fight outside a Saskatoon bar.

It was a sad set of circumstances that concluded in Saskatoon provincial court on Thursday, with Christopher Godlien pleading guilty to assault causing bodily harm. The second accused, Robbie Watier, previously pleaded guilty to assault in relation to the same incident.

They were at Tequila Nightclub in Saskatoon on the night of March 8, 2014, at a fundraiser for the following day’s funeral for Dustin Boulet.

Boulet died on his 29th birthday, March 1, 2014, after he was stabbed outside Bridge’s Ale House & Eatery. His family said he was trying to break up a fight at the time.

Another man at Tequila that night, Brandon Selinger, apparently was looking for a fight, according to Godlien’s defence lawyer.

“In (Selinger’s) own statements, one of the things he likes to do is go drinking and look for fights,” Leslie Sullivan told the court.

Selinger started “beaking” at a group of young men standing outside the bar, and a scuffle started between him and another unidentified young man. At some point, others joined in and the consensual fight turned into a group assault on Selinger — but Godlien and Watier were the only two who were positively identified.

The group of men fled before police arrived and Selinger was taken to hospital. He required surgery for a broken jaw and had to be on a liquid diet for two months while he recovered, Crown prosecutor Val Adamko said in court.

Godlien and Watier were initially charged with aggravated assault, but eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges. One of the reasons Godlien’s case took so long to conclude was that there were issues accessing the surveillance video so he and his lawyer could watch it — and when his preliminary hearing was scheduled earlier this year, Selinger didn’t come to court.

The Crown and defence jointly proposed a one-year conditional sentence order, or jail sentence served in the community, for Godlien — the same sentence Watier received. Both men agreed to pay $1,500 each in restitution to Selinger.

“He’s sorry this ever happened,” Sullivan said. “He wishes he could have had this over, in this fashion, a long time ago.”