A Garden Hill First Nation 17-year-old who killed 11-year-old Teresa Robinson in 2015 received a sentence of six years in custody minus time served, the CBC reported Feb. 5.
The youth, who can't be named under the terms of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, has already spent two years in custody and the prison term is the maximum he could be sentenced to as ayouth. He will be under court supervision for an additional four years, prohibited from owning weapons for 10 years and required to submit a DNA sample to a database as well.
CBC reported Judge Chris Martin said the murder was a "stunningly cruel" act and that the remorse expressed by her killer was shallow and contradicted by the fact that he didn't admit his guilt until he was arrested nearly a year after her murder. The teen pleaded guilty to first-degree murder late last year.
The teen's lawyer told the court he had difficulty learning English, struggled in school and was bullied about his weight, but had no history of drug or alcohol use, no history of mental illness and no prior involvement with the law.
The teen was arrested in March 2016, about a month after RCMP sought voluntary DNA samples from about 2,000 males aged 15 to 50 in Garden Hill.
Robinson's body was discovered May 11, 2015, several days after she went missing after attending a birthday party. Initially, it was believed she may have been killed by animals but an autopsy two days after her body was found determined that she had died as the result of a homicide. The upper half of her body had been eaten by animals and her skull was found about 30 feet from the rest of her remains, the CBC reported. The autopsy also revealed that she had been sexually assaulted.
The 17-year-old's lawyer told court last year that he would admit that the murder occurred during the course of a sexual assault.
Garden Hill First Nation, an Oji-Cree-speaking community, is located on Island Lake about 300 kilometres southeast of Thompson and comprises about 18,180 acres. It is only accessible in summer and fall by boat from Island Lake and Cochrane Bay, or by air, and in the spring and winter by air or ice road.
