Teen who lured man to death sentenced as adult – Winnipeg Free Press

An Interlake teenager who admitted luring a Winnipeg man to his death in Assiniboine Park has been sentenced as an adult to life in prison without the possibility of parole for seven years.

A 19-year-old man and an 18-year-old co-defendant pleaded guilty last summer to second-degree murder in the February 2022 killing of Paul Enns.

Under the Juvenile Criminal Justice Act, young people are considered to have “diminished moral culpability” compared to adults. In order to convince the court to impose an adult sentence, prosecutors must successfully “rebut” this presumption and convince the judge that the juvenile sentence is not long enough to hold the offender accountable. The maximum sentence for juveniles for second-degree murder is seven years in prison and probation.

Ens, 43, was found dead in the back seat of his BMW in a parking lot off Conservatory Drive in Assiniboine Park at 3 a.m. on February 26. They stabbed him with a screwdriver, beat him on the head and body with a bat, and stole his wallet and car keys.

Ens was lured to the site under the pretext of sexual contact after teenagers contacted him on social media.

The circumstances of the killing “establish that (the teenager) had the moral capacity of an adult,” King’s Bench Justice Vic Toews said in a ruling Wednesday.

“In this regard, it is important to note not only the extremely prolonged nature of the attack itself, but also the fact that (the teenager) was … the leader of the two accused.

“Together with the co-accused, he planned a robbery, had the foresight to arm himself. He made a conscious decision to attack the victim and carried out this plan with brutal efficiency.”

The teenager, seemingly unfazed by the ruling, yawned and stretched his arms at the end of the hearing, before turning to check his hair in the window behind the prisoner’s box.

According to an agreed statement of facts read by Teeves in court, a mutual acquaintance of Enns and the defendant said he witnessed a “physically hostile encounter” between the two men sometime before the murder.

The then 15-year-old criminal exchanged more than 100 text messages with Ens in the hours before the attack and arranged to meet in a park around midnight. The girl joined Ens in his car and stabbed him twice in the leg and once in the neck with a sharpened screwdriver before the offender joined in the attack and beat Ens to death with his fists and a baseball bat.

Enns’ family members, who sat in the court gallery, sobbed as Toews described the multiple injuries, including multiple skull fractures, broken eye sockets, jaw and teeth.

Two hours after the murder, the two teenagers met a friend outside a Stonewall gas station and “boasted about beating the deceased,” showing the friend where Enns had scratched them.

Another acquaintance told the police that the teenagers said the same thing shortly after.

“They laughed a lot, smiled and said that they would not be caught because they did it wisely,” said an acquaintance. The teenagers told an acquaintance that they beat Ens “and watched him beg for his life.”

A day before the murder, the teenager tried to enlist the help of a friend to “jump on the pedo” and offered to pay him $300. The friend refused.

The day after the murder, the teenagers used Anns’ credit card at the Polo Park Mall in Winnipeg to buy popcorn and a pair of joggers for the girl. The girl was wearing sneakers when police arrested her at her home in Stonewall on March 1, 2022.

Police arrested the teenager three days later at a Winnipeg hospital where he was being treated for an unrelated illness.

Prosecutors originally intended to recommend an adult sentence for the female offender, but changed their stance after completing court-ordered reports examining her history and prospects for rehabilitation.

Crown prosecutor Jody Coffman and lawyers Mike Cook and Emily Cook jointly recommended that the woman receive a maximum sentence of seven years in prison and conditional supervision in the community, which will take place under an intensive rehabilitation care and supervision order. Under the program, offenders are given access to individual counseling, occupational therapy, tutoring and other specialized services at a cost of $100,000 a year.

Crown and defense lawyers recommended splitting the teenager’s four-year sentence into two years of incarceration and two years of open custody, where she would be eligible for parole into the community.

Toews agreed with the content of the joint recommendation, but ordered the teenager to serve four years in custody. The judge said she would be required to report to him for annual reviews, during which he could change the terms of her custody if she made progress in her rehabilitation.

“It is clear from the testimony that she was an active participant and apparently had no remorse for her involvement in the killing until the time of her arrest,” Teeves said. “If the evidence at the annual review of her sentence warrants a less severe form of detention, the court may change the sentence at that time.”

At a sentencing hearing last summer, the court heard the woman had a history of being sexually exploited by older men and had a history of self-harm and suicide attempts.

According to a pre-sentencing report, the woman described her co-defendant — her then-boyfriend — as a manipulator who used her vulnerability as a victim of sexual assault to convince her to take part in the attack by falsely claiming Enns was a pedophile.

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Dean Pritchard
Court reporter

Dean Pritchard is a court reporter Free press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining to Free press in 2019. Learn more about Dean.

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