A teen who orchestrated an unprovoked, fatal attack on a stranger at Assiniboine Park offered conflicting explanations for the killing following his arrest, including that he was sick with mononucleosis, a court has heard.
The man, who is now 19, and an 18-year-old female co-accused have pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the February 2022 killing of 43-year-old Paul Enns.
Prosecutors argued at a sentencing hearing Wednesday that King’s Bench Justice Vic Toews should sentence the male accused as an adult to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least seven years.
Paul Enns, 43, was found dead in the backseat of his BMW in a parking lot near Conservatory Drive in Assiniboine Park at 3 a.m. on Feb. 26.
A 2023 pre-sentence report provided to court said the man claimed his judgment was clouded by a case of mononucleosis — commonly known as the “kissing disease” — at the time of the killing. Court has heard the man was, in fact, arrested in hospital days after the killing as he was recovering from mononucleosis.
But by the time he was interviewed last November for a court-ordered forensic report, the man made no mention of his sickness, claiming he was a “dumb kid” upset that his co-accused — his then girlfriend — had cheated on him.
“I thought that was suggestive of (him) manipulating his story to suit his assessment of what the interviewer was interested in or wanting to hear,” testified Dr. Keith Hildahl, who conducted the forensic assessment.
Enns, 43, was found dead in the backseat of his BMW in a parking lot near Conservatory Drive in Assiniboine Park at 3 a.m. on Feb. 26.
Court has heard Enns was lured to the location under the pretext of a sexual encounter after the teens contacted him over social media.
According to an agreed statement of facts previously provided to court, a mutual acquaintance of the two killers said the then-17-year-old male offender and Enns had a “physically hostile encounter” sometime prior to the fatal attack, while the girl had never met him.
The then-15-year-old female offender exchanged more than 100 text messages with Enns in the hours prior to the attack.
As the male offender hid nearby outside, the girl joined Enns in his car shortly before midnight and stabbed him three times with a sharpened screwdriver. The male teen then joined the attack and beat Enns with his fists and a baseball bat.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES
Court has heard Enns was lured to the location under the pretext of a sexual encounter after the teens contacted him over social media.
The teens later laughed and bragged to friends about the killing and said they wouldn’t get caught because they “did it smart.” A day later the teens used Enns’s credit card at the Polo Park mall to buy popcorn and a pair of runners for the girl.
According to a pre-sentence report, the male offender claimed he had planned the robbery to obtain money to impress his co-accused and he had targeted Enns in the belief he was a pedophile.
“His overt jealousy and toxic masculinity led to the murder of Mr. Enns over his belief that vigilante justice was permitted when one doesn’t agree with the behaviour of others,” Crown attorney Jodi Koffman told Toews. “What’s worse is these are based on perceptions that aren’t founded in truth.”
The male offender claimed in the pre-sentence report that he “felt scared and almost in shock” after the attack.
Koffman said his actions in the days that followed showed that was a lie.
“These are not the actions of someone in shock over what he had done to another human being,” she said.
“These are not the actions of someone in shock over what he had done to another human being.”–Crown attorney Jodi Koffman
Hildahl said it is his opinion the man has a “profound disturbance in his identity,” and during their interview showed signs of narcissistic personality disorder, grandiosity, and a lack of empathy and other “pro-social emotions.”
“Borderline personality disorder best encapsulates what I saw,” Hildahl said. “This is a personality disorder, not a bump in development along the way… into adulthood. These fixed traits should cause considerable concern to the court moving forward about him being safe in public because these traits don’t tend to move easily.”
Two months before the killing, court was told, the teen was arrested after RCMP responded to a report he had barricaded himself in the bedroom of his Interlake-area home and was smashing his belongings with a baseball bat following a dispute with his parents over homework.
Police shocked the teen with a Taser after he refused to drop the bat. He lunged at officers before being taken into custody.
On the way to the police station, the teen told officers he “had lots of fun” and would “do it again” and that bullets “make cool scars.”
While in custody at the Manitoba Youth Centre, the teen was the subject of nearly 30 incident reports, including multiple assaults on other youths and an alleged sexual assault on a younger inmate.
As a result, he was transferred to an adult jail last October.
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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