WARNING: This article contains disturbing details.
The family of a Calgary woman who was savagely killed by a man she was in a relationship with is frustrated with the judicial system and concerned the man will reoffend.
Sharilyn Gagnon is described as a person who was always there to help people out.
“She valued other people before herself,” her sister Marion Crompton said on Sunday.
“She always felt that other people’s worth was more than her own. I don’t think she ever saw how beautiful she was or how smart she was,” Crompton said.
Crompton said Sharilyn had a strong sense of family. She didn’t have a lot of money, but whatever money she had went to visiting family in Saskatchewan. She was a single mother of three children.
In the spring of 2019, she met Vladimir Ngbangbo Soki, a Calgary man whom she soon told her family she was going to marry.
“She said she was going to get married within a month of her knowing this guy. She said: ‘He loves me.’ That’s the low self-esteem she had. It did not take him long to say: ‘I love you. Let’s get married.’ She would’ve seen that as, ‘This person cares about me,'” Crompton said.
Around a half a year after the two met, Soki was charged with assaulting Gagnon.
“He beat her so bad he was incarcerated and when he got out, that’s when things really got bad,” Crompton said.
Crompton and the rest of her family tried to help Sharilyn, providing her with food, money, a place to stay. They got her into rehabilitation centres.
“She was always giving us hope that things were better. She was a private person, and she lied to keep the façade up,” Crompton said.
“After she met Soki, she started to reduce communication with us.”
Her family says Soki gave her drugs and made her his property.
“That’s the one thing I don’t know: how this person had their claws in her. Was she threatened?” Crompton said.
On March 23, 2021, Gagnon was at the Airport Traveller’s Inn in northeast Calgary when was killed. She suffered more than 140 stab wounds and blunt force injuries. Several weapons were used, including a lamp and hatchet.
“If it was self-defence, maybe one or two blows, but 140? Mutilating her so badly that the funeral director was bawling. She said: ‘I never cry but I am so sorry for your family.’ We couldn’t recognize her. They did as good a job as they could with what she had left for bone structure,” Crompton said.
“The amount of defensive wounds — she fought for her life. She was frightened,” Crompton said.
Soki was charged with second-degree murder in March 2021. He also faced aggravated assault charges in relation to the serious assault of another man.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter following a plea deal.
Calgary defence lawyer Balfour Der was not involved in this case, but says cases often go to manslaughter from murder if the person is too intoxicated to form the intent to murder. Court documents show Soki was intoxicated.
“If a person is heavily intoxicated, drugs are alcohol, they are guilty of manslaughter,” Der said.
“I think in this case what makes it seem different and what may cause people to think this is a murder as opposed to something else is the extreme nature of the injuries and that’s understandable. But I actually think the type and degree of injuries is actually conducive to someone who is in a drug-crazed state,” Der said.
“It’s just so wild and so over-the-top violence that would lead most of us to say: this person is out of their mind when they were doing it, which is really what the nature of the plea bargain is … that the person is so heavily intoxicated by drugs that they were out of their mind,” Der said.
Soki got a 10-year prison sentence for manslaughter on Friday.
With credit for the time he’s already served, Soki has just under six years left on his sentence.
Soki has a lengthy criminal record, with 27 previous convictions, including the previous assault on Gagnon.
A pre-sentence report found he is a high risk to violently reoffend.
“How many other women feel this way, trapped that they got themselves in the situation and they don’t want to burden their families? He serves less than six years. Now he gained a whole other year free because of the delays in the case,” Crompton said.
Crompton is also worried about what will happened when her sister’s killer gets out.
“He’s at high risk to reoffend. He had 27 other offenses.
“And the fact it was second-degree murder and they went to the plea bargain just because of the way the judicial system works,” Crompton said.
Mount Royal University justice studies professor Doug King said the judge would have taken all the factors into account and that the family does have a genuine concern when it comes to the possibility of reoffending.
King said Soki can’t be declared a dangerous offender at this point because that had to be petitioned by the Crown before he was sentenced, which would have led to an indeterminate sentence.
He said it’s still possible for Soki to be declared a long-term offender.
“Which means when he does get out, he will be under more enhanced supervision in the community. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is an attempt to fill in the gap between dangerous offender and people who do very outrageous things that lead to concerns they will continue to do it,” King said.
King said judges don’t make decisions about sentencing lightly.
“Inevitably, people whose families have been victims of crime will never think the sentence is sufficient. That’s understandable and we should support their concerns,” King said.
Crompton warns that this tragedy can happen to any family.
“No matter who you are or where you come from, you can become victim to a person like this.
“My sister was a caring and beautiful person. She just did not see this for herself. She fell in love easily and she was quick to trust people. All these things I did (to help her) because I truly believed my sister would get out, she would see her worth and she would live the life she was supposed to,” Crompton said.
“I was too naive and now I lost my sister to a monster. Now I fear this same monster will be able to hurt again, do the same thing to another person, and that hurts.”
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