A man charged with manslaughter for selling a gun to a teen who killed two Edmonton police officers is an easy scapegoat in a case the Crown hopes can be used to expand criminal liability for gun violence, his lawyer argued Thursday.
Court of King’s Bench Justice John Little heard closing arguments in the case against 21-year-old Dennis Okeymow, who faces more than a dozen charges from the shooting that claimed the lives of Const. Travis Jordan and Const. Brett Ryan.
The trial heard that the officers were killed while responding to a domestic violence call in March 2023.
Roman Shewchuk, 16, had strangled his mother until she lost consciousness. When she woke up, she ran to a nearby apartment building where she called police.
Jordan and Ryan were gunned down by the teen as they stood outside the family’s apartment. The teen’s mother was also shot but survived. Shewchuk then turned the gun on himself.
Okeymow pleaded not guilty to three counts of manslaughter in the deaths of the officers and the teen. However, he pleaded guilty to weapon and drug trafficking charges.
Little is to give a verdict at a later date.
“(Okeymow) is, frankly, an easy scapegoat in our society upon which to heap the responsibility of these tremendous sorrows, when there is no other concrete person to blame for this tragedy,” said his lawyer, Jamil Sawani.
“The perpetrator of these acts is not here, so the Crown proposes Mr. Okeymow take his place as an effigy to be burned in this public square.”
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The Crown argued that Okeymow should be held criminally responsible because he sold the rifle the boy used in the shooting. Okeymow also sold cannabis and cocaine to the teen, who had earlier been hospitalized for schizophrenia.
Prosecutor Adam Garrett said even if Okeymow didn’t know the extent of Shewchuk’s mental illness, the man is criminally responsible for selling a rifle to a minor who couldn’t legally buy one.
Court heard Shewchuk and Okeymow exchanged more than 600 text messages, most related to drugs, and met up about two dozen times.
Okeymow sold the .22-calibre semi-automatic rifle and 80 rounds of ammunition to the boy in early 2023. The teen initially asked for a handgun, but Okeymow said he didn’t have one.
Shewchuk bought the rifle for $2,500, a price the Crown said is about four times what it would be worth if purchased legally.
Investigators later determined the boy used the same rifle to shoot a man at a pizza restaurant near his house days before killing the officers. The man survived but was severely injured.
Garrett said the Crown only has to argue that Okeymow should have seen a risk that someone could have been harmed or killed by selling the firearm.
“The accused should and must be held responsible, not just for this unlawful trafficking of the firearm, but for the objectively foreseeable, I would argue obvious, risk he chose to ignore,” Garrett said.
He said the case is among the few in Canada in which someone who sells a gun for monetary gain faces homicide-related charges but that the judge can apply existing laws around liability.
“The accused knew or was wilfully blind that the rifle was not needed for any legitimate purpose,” Garrett said.
“Roman’s purpose was obviously illegitimate and dangerous.”
Sawani accused the Crown of using the case to create a new category of criminal liability, with prosecutors and law enforcement across the country “waiting with bated breath” on the outcome of the trial.
“(This) prosecutorial ambition collides with the rights of a specific accused and also threatens to dramatically extend the gambit of serious criminal liability to members of the public,” he said.
Sawani said such changes must come from Parliament and not be tested in court with a disadvantaged Indigenous young man. Okeymow was 18 at the time of the offences.
The defence lawyer also said the Crown didn’t provide concrete evidence that his client knew the boy faced serious mental-health problems, adding Okeymow never witnessed any violent behaviour from the teen.
Shewchuk wasn’t triggered by the sale of the gun, Sawani added, which happened about six weeks before the shooting at the restaurant.
He said the boy’s actions were solely the “product of his own psychotic decision-making.”
The judge reserved their decision until at least late May or early June.
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