Hockey stick killer gets seven years

Thomassie Koneak, 25, one of three Kuujjuaq men accused in the brutal killing of a Kativik Regional Government employee, will spend the next 42 months behind bars as the result of a plea bargain.

This past Monday in Amos, Quebec, Judge Jacques Viens sentenced Koneak to seven years in jail, minus 42 months for time spent in preventive custody awaiting trial.

A deal reached last week between Crown and defence lawyers saw Koneak pleading guilty to manslaughter.

The plea bargain ended the trial, which started the previous week in Puvirnituq.

Koneak was charged along with Bobby “Teelu” Snowball Jr., 23, and Joey Partridge, 20 with first-degree murder, forcible confinement, aggravated sexual assault causing injury and theft after police found the body of Claude Bourget, a senior accounting clerk at the KRG, in his Kuujjuaq home on Feb. 2, 2005.

Bourget, 50, died from injuries received during a beating, which included an assault with a hockey stick that was thrust into his rectum.

At Koneak’s preliminary hearing last year, a Superior Court of Quebec judge determined there was enough evidence to proceed to trial. The judge ordered him to stand trial on charges of first-degree murder, forcible confinement and aggravated sexual assault causing injury. Koneak also faced a charge of theft under $5,000.

Snowball and Partridge waived their right to a preliminary inquiry into the similar charges facing them and asked to proceed directly to trial.