Editor’s note: this story contains disturbing details.
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Citing the seriousness of the crime, the Crown is seeking to have a Lakeshore teen who has confessed to killing a younger boy two years ago sentenced as an adult.
The victim was the teen’s younger brother, who died at age 12.
The young offender, 16 at the time of the killing inside the family home on April 12, 2023, was charged with first-degree murder. He entered a guilty plea to the lesser criminal offence of second-degree murder during a Superior Court of Justice appearance in Windsor on Jan. 14.
A sentencing hearing for the youth, now 18 years old, is scheduled for April, at which time the Crown will be asking that he be treated as an adult for the purpose of punishment.
“It has to do with the gravity of the offence,” Crown attorney Eric Costaris told the Star.
Costaris, who is handling the prosecution with Belinda Pagliaroli, the West Region director of Crown operations, would not comment further on the case ahead of the upcoming sentencing hearing.
Julie Santarossa, the lawyer for the young offender, was equally tight-lipped when contacted by the Star: “I really can’t comment.”
The Ontario Provincial Police divulged very little at the time of the murder charge being laid, with a short news release simply stating a 16-year-old Lakeshore male had been charged with murder and that “the deceased and the accused knew each other.”
According to an agreed statement of facts that the Crown read into the court record last week before Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas, the parents of the two boys were at an appointment the afternoon of April 12, 2023, when a school bus dropped off the younger son. Waiting for him at the door shortly before 4 p.m was the older boy, who had skipped school, “claiming to be ill.”
The older boy, wearing latex gloves, was armed with a lighter and a can of insect repellent, “to create what he termed a ‘do-it-yourself flamethrower.’”
When the homemade flamethrower “failed to fully engulf” the younger boy, according to the statement, the older boy reached for a baseball bat he had at the ready and beat his victim “until he became bloodied and lifeless.”
The young killer then dragged his brother from the front entrance of the home into the kitchen in front of a natural gas stove. He turned on the gas burners without lighting them, “believing the natural gas would fill the house and an explosion would result, destroying the evidence to the crime.”
He discarded the latex gloves in the garbage, gathered up the items used to kill his brother and was in such a rush to get out of the house — believing an explosion was imminent — that he forgot to put on his shoes.
At about 4:15 p.m., a couple out for a walk on a neighbouring rural property discovered the shoeless youth they’d never met before sitting on the ground. He at first “firmly” told them to go away, which they did, but then they turned around when the boy began yelling and screaming.
He asked them to call police and then to take him to the police. On the trip to the Lakeshore OPP detachment, between small talk, he told them he had a younger brother who had died, but added he “didn’t deserve to die the way he did.”
During the trip it was noted he was “very calm and did not exhibit any notable emotion.”
At the detachment, he confessed his crime to an officer. Police attended the residence and discovered the “clearly deceased” younger boy next to the stove. An officer turned off the open gas burners.
What might have motivated the teenager to commit such a horrific crime of fratricide is left unaddressed in the statement of facts.
A court-ordered publication ban through the Youth Criminal Justice Act prevents reporting the young offender’s name or information that may identify him.
Whether sentenced as a youth or an adult, a second-degree murder conviction comes with an automatic life sentence. The difference is that a youth gets a first chance to apply for parole after serving seven years, while for an adult, the sentencing judge sets that period of early-release eligibility at anywhere between a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 25 years.