Woman should serve 15 years before seeking parole: Crown
Gang member fired gun ‘for no good reason,’ killing man in his home, prosecutor says
Kendra Phillips loved the thought of getting an updated family photo with her two brothers at her wedding, which her oldest brother Dylan couldn’t wait to attend.
Instead, she had to prop up a picture of her brother on a chair. He didn’t make it to the ceremony.
Dylan was shot and killed during a botched drug robbery on Oct. 14, 2016. He did not know Shaylin Sutherland-kayseas, the gang member who stormed through his front door in the 1400 block of Avenue G North and fired an illegal rifle at his chest.
Nor did he know the 15-year-old boy, who can’t be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, and 25-year-old Trent Southwind — also gang members — who proceeded to beat him and his parents with the gun and a fence board before running away.
Jan and Dale Phillips watched their 26-year-old son die. In her victim impact statement, Kendra said she still feels guilty for not being there to save him.
“I have no logical reason to feel guilty, but you do,” she told Sutherland-kayseas during the woman’s sentencing hearing on Tuesday in Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench.
Following a first-degree murder trial in September, Sutherlandkayseas, 20, was found guilty of second-degree murder. The offence carries a mandatory life sentence, but parole eligibility can be anywhere from 10 to 25 years.
The defence asked for the minimum ineligibility of 10 years, while the Crown argued for 15.
Prosecutor Melodi Kujawa said this was a planned home invasion by three people who wanted drugs and money and didn’t care how they got them. Sutherlandkayseas was also prohibited from having weapons at the time.
“The gun was fired for no good reason. (Dylan) was murdered in front of his own mother. I don’t know how it gets much worse than that,” Kujawa said, adding the assaults against Dylan’s parents should increase parole ineligibility because of the context in which they occurred.
Kujawa said the offender has not shown remorse for killing Dylan, either. When given a chance to speak, Sutherland-kayseas said that wasn’t a fair comment: “Of course I’m sorry for what I did, but me saying sorry, (Phillips’s family) aren’t going to forgive me. I was raised not to show my feelings, you know?”
Although the offenders said they had been told the man who lived at the house had drugs, there is no evidence that Dylan was a drug dealer, Kujawa noted.
Smith reserved his decision until Nov 30.