Boy had to shoot father, judge says

Moved to save mother from ‘imminent’ death

EDMONTON • A northern Alberta teenage boy acquitted of murdering his father had no choice but to pull the trigger to save his mother from “imminent murder,” a judge has found.

The boy was 13 and just finished Grade 6 when he twice shot his abusive father at close range with a hunting rifle in August 2013. In September, then age 15, he was acquitted of second-degree murder when the judge decided the boy, identified in court documents as H, had no choice but to act.

“The first shot taken by H was in defence of and to protect his mother, to avoid her imminent murder if he did not intervene,” wrote Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Paul Jeffrey in a decision released Friday.

“I find the second shot was in defence of himself and also his mother, because the first was insufficient to restrain his father’s aggression, by that time headed toward him.”

The boy left the house with the rifle in one hand and his younger sister in the other. Tests on the man’s body determined he had a blood-alcohol level more than three times over the legal limit.

Court heard the boy’s 47-year-old father was an

Home life was nothing short of horrific

absolute terror in the family home near Fox Lake.

“H’s home life was nothing short of horrific,” Jeffrey wrote. “His father, W, ridiculed, demeaned and abused his wife and his children. It occurred when he was sober and when he was drunk. He drank more days than not and when he drank, he almost always got violent.”

The boy’s father beat his mother into unconsciousness several times. Her toothless smile, scarred lip, a permanent forehead bump and her thrice-broken nose were all constant reminders to the boy of his father’s brutality, Jeffrey wrote.

The father also beat his children, abusing H with “anything in reach,” including cords, pieces of wood and wire. The father knocked H’s older sister into a bathtub and caused her to miscarry her unborn child. He attempted to run over H and two siblings while driving drunk.

In the early hours of Aug. 5, 2013, H once more witnessed his father beating his mother in a relative’s home. H found bullets under his grandfather’s bed and loaded a hunting rifle.

“I’m going to kill you and your Mom,” the father said when he saw his armed son. H shot his father in the leg, then the abdomen.

“H did not intend to kill his father,” Jeffrey wrote. “I believe him in this regard. He intended only to stop him from killing his mother.”