Life term for boy who killed ex-girlfriend
Adult sentence for 16-year-old over brutal death
The Regina teen convicted of stabbing his former girlfriend to death with a hunting knife was sentenced as an adult on Wednesday, automatically receiving life in prison for firstdegree murder.
The decision to sentence him as an adult means the convicted killer can now be identified publicly, after years of his name being concealed because he was 16 at the time of the murder.
He is Skylar Prockner, now 19 years old, who earlier this year pleaded guilty in the brutal, 2015 stabbing death of Hannah Leflar, a 16-year-old honours student in Regina.
“We’re relieved that he got the adult sentence,” Leflar’s mother, Janet, said outside court. “We can finally say Skylar Prockner murdered my daughter, which is a big victory for, us but there are no winners today.
"Nobody won anything. She’s still gone.”
The pair had dated for several months between 2013 and 2014, before Leflar ended the relationship. At a sentencing hearing in May, a Regina court heard of Prockner’s continuing obsession with Leflar. Months before the murder, he hatched ( ultimately abandoned) plots to apparently punish her for moving on — including an expressed desire to cut her brakes, which he never went through with.
He also set up a bogus Facebook account to keep tabs on her, and in doing so learned that she was in a new relationship.
She looked happy in the photos with her new boyfriend — a “tipping point” for Prockner, who had until then held out hope of reconciling with Leflar, according to an agreed statement of facts.
On Jan. 12, 2015, a day after he discovered the posts on Facebook, Prockner decided to kill Leflar, court heard. He asked a friend to arrange that Leflar would be alone when she returned home from school.
When she did arrive home alone, Prockner and his friend were waiting for her in a truck, the Regina Leader Post reported in May. Prockner entered the house and stabbed her multiple times, court heard. Leflar’s stepfather found her when he got home from work.
At the sentencing hearing, Crown prosecutor Chris White argued for an adult sentence, automatic life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 10 years.
Prockner, the Crown said, was a “cold, calculating individual” who viewed his 16-year-old former girlfriend not as a person, but as a thing that stood in the way of his happiness.
The defence, however, argued that Prockner had no criminal record before the homicide and “has mental health issues.” The maximum youth sentence of 10 years — six in custody, four on community supervision — would be sufficient, the defence said.
“From here on out,” Prockner said at his sentencing hearing, “I’m going to live my life doing good for Hannah because of what I did to her.”
“I can’t apologize enough for what I’ve done,” he said, adding that he had found peace in God. “Everyone makes mistakes. It’s what we do to right those wrongs that makes us better.”
At the hearing, Hannah’s mother told Prockner to “burn in hell” and urged the judge not to show any mercy to the killer of her only child.
“I will never know my daughter as an adult. I’ve lost my entire future because of this, a future that revolved around my daughter’s plans. My future is now a blank wall,” Janet Leflar said.
When Queen’s Bench Justice Jennifer Pritchard ruled Wednesday that Prockner would be sentenced as an adult, a packed Regina courtroom burst into applause. Prockner was emotionless.
“I didn’t see how the judge could have made any other decision given the circumstances and the evidence and the obvious lack of remorse,” Leflar’s mother said.