By Bre McAdam

9 years for Saskatoon gang member for brutal killing

Oct 2, 2014 | 5:41 PM

In what a provincial court judge called one of the most tragic cases he’s ever seen, a Saskatoon gang member was sentenced to nine years in prison for numerous violent crimes.
 
Shelby Pinnell, 20, pleaded guilty to several charges Thursday morning at Saskatoon Provincial Court, including aggravated assault, attempted murder and manslaughter. 

The charges stem from five separate incidents starting in 2012 and continuing throughout Pinnell’s time in custody at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre.  
 
Crown prosecutor Robin Ritter said Pinnell was 18 years old and “deeply entrenched” in the Terror Squad gang when he attacked Mervin Clarence McAdam, 22, at a party on Feb. 26, 2012 for “bad mouthing” the gang.
 
Pinnell was originally charged with second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. 

Court heard he punched McAdam hard in the face, but other people started stomping him while he was on the ground. The victim tried to run away through a back alley but was attacked again outside. 

A coroner’s report showed McAdam died from either blunt force trauma or strangulation before his body was set on fire and thrown into a black garbage bin in the 200 block of Avenue S South. Terror Squad graffiti was found on the garage door of the house McAdam had ran to, Ritter said.
 
Defence lawyer Nicholas Stooshinoff said there’s no evidence to show Pinnell “delivered the fatal blow,” or that he was involved with disposing McAdam’s body in the garbage bin. A co-accused man, Bobby Hannah, was sentenced to 11 years last April after pleading guilty to manslaughter and offering an indignity to human remains.
 
Two months later, Pinnell stabbed an acquaintance in the abdomen at a party. 

While the two men were being transported to the correctional centre together, a deputy sheriff overhead Pinnell demand the victim to change his testimony. He agreed, and told police that Pinnell was not the person who stabbed him. Pinnell pleaded guilty to attempted obstruction while in court Thursday morning.
 
He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic cocaine. Court heard that while Pinnell was in custody, correctional centre staff intercepted phone conversations between him and his girlfriend after Pinnell was suspected of being involved in drug trafficking. He told the girl to supervise two drug houses, gave her directions about selling cocaine and even told her to bring drugs into the jail.  
 
Then on April 7, Pinnell got into a jail brawl with two men believed to have been charged with sex offenses. A video shows Pinnell and another inmate stab one of the men 20 times using makeshift knives. Another man picked up a broom and hit Pinnell in the head so hard that it knocked him out. Court heard Pinnell has slight brain damage as a result of the injury; according to his lawyer, he’s been a different person ever since.
 
A “brutalized child:” defence
 
Stooshinoff pointed to the empty courtroom as an example of how support from Pinnell’s family was “sorely missing.”
 
He told Judge Daryl Labach that Pinnell, a member of the James Smith First Nation, grew up in a violent home where he was viciously beaten by various boyfriends of his severely drug-addicted mother. One of his earliest memories is of the camera flashes from social workers taking pictures of his injuries, court heard.
 
Stooshinoff said Pinnell was “unwanted, unloved and brutalized viciously” by those who should have loved and protected him the most. He was placed in 45 different foster homes between the ages of six and 15, and soon found the family he never had in street gangs.
 
Pinnell used to be angry, suspicious and full of hate, but Stooshinoff said his attitude has become more open and positive since his brain injury.
 
By the age of 18, “he lived a tougher life than most people could ever imagine,” Judge Labach said before accepting the Crown and defence’s joint-submission of a nine-year sentence. 
But while he acknowledged Pinnell had been trapped in “an abyss of despair and violence” as a child, Labach urged him to make better decisions as an adult.
 
“Only time will tell if I see you again, and don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I don’t,” Labach said.

Raiders AGM

Raiders impact on Prince Albert local economy continues to go up: AGM report

5h ago

Court proceedings

'The impact of this trauma will echo for generations': court case surrounding La Ronge woman's death reaches conclusion

Dec 11, 2024

Going Global

P.A.'s Zablocki named to Team Canada for U18 Women's World Championships

Dec 11, 2024

news@panow.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow