A Winnipeg woman who admitted to restraining a vulnerable Indigenous woman and helping dump her bound body in a garbage bin on a cold winter night one year ago has been sentenced to 39 months in custody.
Evelyn McKay, 41, pleaded guilty to one count of forcible confinement for her part in the 27-year-old victim’s hours-long ordeal on Dec. 10, 2023.
McKay admitted to restraining the woman with duct tape and zip ties inside a Manitoba Housing suite on Carlton Avenue at the behest of co-accused Joey Audy, a gang member with whom she had been in a brief relationship.
Provincial court Judge Mark Kantor said he was satisfied McKay was under “a degree of duress” when she complied with Audy’s demands.
“It seems everybody in that apartment was fearful of Mr. Audy,” Kantor said.
Court has heard the victim was waiting for a bus at Sargent Avenue and Maryland Street at about 3:30 p.m. when a man she didn’t know approached her and said, “You’re coming with me,” before pulling her onto a departing bus.
The man took the victim to a Manitoba Housing complex and led her to a suite where McKay was visiting with tenants Lorde Barrios and Misty Bird. Also present were Audy and Romeo Miles, two gang members who had gone to the suite armed with a crowbar and knife for the purpose of “recruiting” Barrios to their gang.
The woman used the washroom after she entered the suite, during which time the man who took her there left the building. When the woman exited the washroom, Audy asked her who had taken her there and she mistakenly identified Barrios.
When Barrios denied knowing the victim, Audy suspected that the victim was a “narc” or a “rat.”
McKay tried to leave the suite but was stopped by Audy, who ordered her to check the victim for “wires” or recording devices.
Audy punched and kicked the victim in the face before telling McKay and Bird to tie her up with duct tape. Audy shoved the woman under a bed and left the suite, telling Barrios he would return later to “collect” the victim.
McKay left the suite sometime later, after which Barrios and Bird released the woman from her restraints. Audy returned to the suite around 9 p.m. and, after finding the woman had been freed from her restraints, punched her in the head.
When McKay returned to the suite just before midnight, Audy ordered her to tie up the victim again. Audy stomped on the woman’s head and forced her body into a hockey bag.
Audy and McKay took the woman to an elevator and then dragged the hockey bag to a dumpster, where Audy tossed it inside and closed the lid.
Audy and McKay left separately.
Kantor said it was an “extremely aggravating” factor that McKay assisted Audy a second time and made no effort to return and help the victim out of the garbage bin, noting she “had the presence of mind” to try shielding her face from an elevator security camera.
“I believe, at the time, Ms. McKay appreciated the magnitude of her actions,” Kantor said.
The victim remained in the garbage bin for approximately 30 minutes before Barrios went outside, heard her screams for help, and released her.
“It was like I wasn’t even human to you, I was just something to throw away,” the woman told McKay at a sentencing hearing last week.
Court heard McKay has long struggled with addictions to alcohol and drugs and was homeless at the time of the incident. While in custody, she has pursued rehabilitative programming and taken positive steps forward, her lawyer Chris Gamby said last week, recommending she serve no more than six additional months in jail.
Kantor credited McKay for time served, reducing her remaining sentence to just over 23 months.
Audy remains before the court. A previously completed psychiatric assessment found he is fit to stand trial.
Charges of forcible confinement and robbery involving Barrios and Bird were stayed earlier this year.
Miles pleaded guilty to forcible confinement and robbery and was sentenced in March to 18 months in jail.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.
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