Selfie solved slaying

This snap of friends brought justice in a tragic killing

The STORY

Arm slung around her best friend, smiling Cheyenne Rose Antoine snapped a selfie and uploaded it to Facebook.

The girls then headed off for a night out.

But while Brittney Gargol, 18, and Cheyenne, 19, were best of friends, they came from totally different worlds.

Brittney grew up with a loving family.

She studied hard and dreamed big – planning to open her own hotel one day.

She was naturally beautiful and popular with everyone.

Cheyenne’s story was very much the other side of the coin.

The odds were stacked against her from the start.

Both her parents struggled with addiction issues and she was put into foster care aged 2.

For the next 16 years, she was passed around different families, never having somewhere that she could truly call home.

She claimed to have suffered physical and sexual abuse within the foster-care system. It left her traumatised. After years without contact, she eventually got back in touch with her birth mum.

But, tragically, just as they began reconnecting as mother and daughter, her mum suddenly died.

Teenage Cheyenne was devastated. After trying for years to keep it together, she finally crumbled.

She started drinking heavily, and dabbling in drugs.

In early 2015, she decided to report the abuse she said she’d suffered in foster care to police.

She found the investigation that followed emotionally difficult and turned to booze and drugs more frequently to cope with her feelings.

Yet while Cheyenne and Brittney might’ve seemed unlikely friends, they clicked and quickly became close. That night, in March 2015, the pair had been invited to a house party near where they both lived in Saskatchewan, Canada.

They spent ages putting on make-up together, choosing outfits.

Brittney left her long, auburn hair loose and wore a black biker jacket.

Cheyenne opted for a blackand-white dress, paired with a black belt that featured a distinctive, large buckle.

And, after snapping that selfie in the kitchen, the girls headed out to have fun.

As the night wore on, they both got drunk and high from smoking marijuana.

And Brittney would never arrive home.

Hours later, her body was found at the side of a road by a passer-by.

She wasn’t wearing any shoes, and was lying on her back, freezing cold.

The emergency services were quickly called, but

Seemingly unlikely friends they clicked, were close

Brittney was already dead.

A postmortem showed that she’d been strangled.

And, near to her body, a black belt with a large buckle had been found.

Police suspected that it was the weapon used.

But they couldn’t say for sure to whom the belt belonged.

Cheyenne claimed to be as baffled as the police.

Where are you? Haven’t heard from you. Hope you made it home safe, Cheyenne wrote on Brittney’s Facebook wall.

When the police asked her what’d happened, she claimed the last time she’d seen Brittney was when she left a bar with an unidentified man.

Now the police launched an investigation to find Brittney’s killer. It lasted two agonising years. Eventually, the breakthrough they needed came.

Officers received a tip-off that Cheyenne had drunkenly confessed to another friend that she was responsible for killing Brittney.

That, somehow, on the way home, a silly drunken argument had broken out between the two friends.

And, after a fit of rage from Cheyenne, Brittney had ended up dead.

But Cheyenne wasn’t about to own up to what she’d done.

Needing more evidence, detectives dug deeper – and it was then that they spotted the picture posted on Facebook of the girls together that very night. Smiling, happy. And, just visible in the corner, it was clear that Cheyenne was wearing a familiar and distinctive black belt.

The same black belt detectives suspected was used to strangle Brittney.

The lethal weapon…

Now, everything fell into place.

Cheyenne was arrested and charged with seconddegree murder.

At a preliminary hearing, Cheyenne Rose Antoine, then 21, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter.

The court heard that, although she didn’t remember killing her friend, she accepted responsibility for the death.

Her lawyer Lisa Watson told the court that Cheyenne’s difficult start in life played a big part in how the young woman behaved that night.

‘My client had some very deep, personal issues that she was not dealing with – and, unfortunately, they turned into a very tragic situation for all involved,’ she said.

Cheyenne was too upset to speak in court, but asked Lisa Watson to read a statement on her behalf.

‘I will never forgive myself. Nothing I say or do will ever bring her back. I am very, very sorry. It shouldn’t have ever happened,’ she said.

Judge Marilyn Gray sentenced Cheyenne Antoine to seven years behind bars for her crime, saying that the term balanced the nature of the crime with the fact that she’d pleaded guilty and shown remorse for her actions.

‘Honour your friend by becoming a positive member of the community,’ the judge told Cheyenne.

‘You owe it to her.’