Cape Dorset woman guilty of manslaughter, Crown seeks 12-year term

ANDREW SEYMOUR
Postmedia News

The night Louisa Killiktee attacked Arlene Lahey from behind, slamming her to the ground before kicking her in the head over and over again, she was drunk and angry, as she had been so many times before.

Lashing out violently after bouts of heavy drinking had become a pattern for Killiktee. That included trying to drown a woman in the Ottawa River and throwing baseball-sized rocks at the man who tried to resuscitate her victim, kicking her own two-year-old daughter off the bed so she’d fall on her head and then clawing and kicking her spouse in the face after he rescued the child and called 911, according to prosecutors.

Then there were the times when Killiktee took swings at strangers on Besserer Street and later struck a man in the face on Montreal Road before attacking another nearby woman.

So, when Lahey called Killiktee a whore and a slut and slapped her in the head in an alley behind the Shepherd’s of Good Hope on July 8, 2009, an enraged Killiktee attacked.

It was over in seconds and all caught on video. Even as the 44-year-old Lahey lay prone and motionless on the ground, Killiktee tried to get at her. Only a witness who rushed to Lahey’s aid was able to hold Killiktee back.

Lahey died in hospital nearly four months later. Killiktee pleaded guilty to manslaughter in June.

Now Killiktee should be sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison for the “extreme and vicious violence” she unleashed, prosecutor Suzanne Schriek argued Sept. 27.

But Killiktee’s lawyer said alcohol was a way of life for the 28-year-old Inuit woman from Cape Dorset, Nunavut.

Her alcohol addiction was the same as that of her parents. She was abused as a child, emotionally, physically and sexually, like so many other members of Canada’s aboriginal communities, Oliver Abergel said.

Less than a month before the attack on Lahey, Killiktee had lost triplets to a miscarriage and her brother to suicide, Abergel said. Her circumstances and background made her the most traumatized of the 500 clients who had ever been treated by counsellors at an Inuit healing centre, Abergel added.

Killiktee’s past needed to be considered during sentencing, Abergel argued.

“Being Inuit is not a free pass to a lower sentence,” said Abergel, who argued that Killiktee should be sentenced to a further two years in the penitentiary on top of the two-forone credit she should receive for the nearly two years and three months she had already spent behind bars.

“That being said, her Inuit background and the abuse and the tragedy she has suffered in her life go into the mix of deciding what to do with her.”

For members of Lahey’s grieving family, though, Killiktee’s problem with alcohol was nothing more than an excuse for an “inhumane beating” that ultimately robbed their sister of her life in a Burlington hospital months later.

“This is someone with a history of assault charges on her record and is using alcohol as an excuse for her ridiculous beating on my sister’s head with her foot,” Lahey’s sister, Darlene Mitchell, wrote to the court. Lahey could no longer talk, walk or feed herself as a result of head injuries suffered in the attack, and she died after coming down with pneumonia. Lahey, who also had problems with alcohol, was suffering from terminal liver disease at the time of the attack.

“My sister was not perfect and had her share of struggles,” said another sister, Laura Bailey. “She didn’t deserve to die so young, especially in the brutal, tragic way.”

Abergel agreed there was no excuse for what Killiktee did. The attack, he said, was “nasty, brutish and short.”

However, once Killiktee calmed down, she tended to Lahey, touching her head and waited for the ambulance.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushny is expected to sentence Killiktee on Oct. 20.

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