No parole for 14 years for man who killed Inuk girlfriend

Nellie Angutiguluk, a 27-year-old Inuk mother of three from Pivurnituq, was found strangled in the Montreal apartment she shared with Kwasi Benjamin in May 2017. Benjamin was found guilty of second-degree murder in February and sentenced to life in prison. He will have to wait 14 years before he is eligible to apply for parole. (FILE PHOTO)

Kwasi Benjamin, the man sentenced to life in prison for killing his live-in girlfriend Nellie Angutiguluk, will have to wait 14 years before he is eligible to apply for parole.

Angutiguluk, a 27-year-old Inuk mother of three from Pivurnituq, was found strangled in the apartment the couple shared in Cote-des-Neiges, a Montreal borough, in May 2015.

A jury had found Benjamin guilty of second-degree murder back in February.

On Sept. 19 this year, during Benjamin’s sentencing hearing, the Crown prosecutor, Jean-Philippe MacKay, asked for 17 years before parole eligibility, while the defence asked for 10 years.

That same day, a family member read a victim impact statement about the ways Angutiguluk’s death has weighed on the victim’s children, now orphans in Nunavik, without much in the way of mental health services to counter that trauma.

The judge took the victim impact statement into consideration when determining the eligibility period for parole, MacKay said in an interview with Nunatsiaq News on Wednesday, Oct. 31.

He said that there was a long list of reasons the judge provided for his sentencing decision, which will be published in the coming weeks, but he shared some of the ones he found most important.

“She was a vulnerable person, especially since she was intoxicated at the time. She was a lot shorter than him, weighing 135 pounds, and Benjamin was a tall man. He was also under strict bail conditions that were meant to protect Nellie,” MacKay said.

Benjamin had been arrested previously for assaulting his girlfriend in the spring of 2015—although this information was withheld from jurors during the trial. He spent about a week in jail before being released on bail on May 12, 2015.

Just six days later, on May 18, Angutiguluk was found dead.

In court, Benjamin said she had died by suicide.

While out on bail, Benjamin’s conditions included not being in the presence of Angutiguluk and not consuming alcohol. The couple lived together, however, and, during the trial, Benjamin testified that he had drunk heavily the night before her death.

In court, forensics experts testified that according to the autopsy report, Angutiguluk had likely died at least 12 hours before Benjamin called 911, and video footage from the lobby of their apartment building showed him, in those hours, go up and down the stairs, in and out of the building, pausing and turning around several times in those hours before calling for help.

According to MacKay, the judge considered Benjamin’s intoxication an aggravating factor, and found that his character, as seen in court, shows he represents a risk of repeated offences.