Man sentenced to 13 years in jail for killing Jeanenne Fontaine

A man has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for his role in the death of an Indigenous woman who was killed during a botched robbery.

Jeanenne Fontaine, who was 29, was shot and her Winnipeg home set on fire in 2017 when three men came to her house to collect on a drug debt her boyfriend owed.

In January, a jury found Jason Meilleur guilty of manslaughter. The Crown asked that Meilleur be sentenced to 15 years and the defence wanted four.

Fontaine was the cousin of Tina Fontaine, a teenager whose body had been found three years earlier in the Red River, and whose death fuelled renewed calls for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.

The trial heard how Jeanenne Fontaine was struggling with addictions after her cousin’s death.