Regina teen pleads guilty to manslaughter in death of Matthew Wells
CBC News | Posted: September 30, 2016 6:49 PM | Last Updated: September 30, 2016
Matthew Wells was the city's 8th homicide of 2015
A Regina teenager has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of Matthew Wells, 48, who was shot and killed in his home in Oct. 2015.
The boy, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, had originally been charged with second-degree murder, along with two adult men — Jason Dustin Hotomanie and Robert Brian Oochoo.
Those men have a preliminary hearing on the murder charges beginning Monday Oct. 3.
The teenager, now 16, pleaded guilty to manslaughter yesterday in youth court in Regina.
"Not that he actually pulled the trigger, rather that he did things to facilitate others doing it," crown prosecutor Christopher White said.
He says the teenager and another boy found a gun with shells and high-capacity magazines in an unlocked vehicle last October.
White says the two youths told the older guys about the find, and they all returned to take the guns and ammunition. The four then set out to "hit hater houses", White said.
He says those are the homes that the four suspected to be "rival gangs or people whose interests ran contrary to that of their group which was the Native Syndicate at the time."
Matthew Wells was home at the first house.
Tragically, White says police believe it was the former residents of the house the group was after. He says the teens stayed in the vehicle and the two adults got out and shot at the home — hitting Wells.
"He died on his living room floor," White said. "He was home with his wife and his step kids and it's pretty tragic."
The men then drove the 2200 block of Robinson Street, where they shot at an apartment there but did not injure the residents.
They continued to a third location on Dewdney Avenue and also shot at it, but it was vacant. White says the tenants who had been there had been evicted by the landlord before the shooting.
The teenager was sentenced to the maximum allowed for his age: three years. With credit for nine months already spent in custody, he has 27 months left in his sentence.
The two adults accused in this case, Oochoo and Hotomanie, are scheduled to appear in court on Monday Oct. 3 in for a preliminary hearing.