Killer's Indigenous heritage cited in lesser sentence for shooting of wife
An Indigenous B.C. man who shot his sleeping wife in the head after a 17-hour drinking binge has been sentenced to under seven years for her death.
The sentence is far below the Crown prosecutor’s request for 16 years and is partially the result of the judge finding the defendant’s Indigenous heritage a significant mitigating factor.
Brent McCook, 28, was convicted last June of manslaughter arising from the unlawful discharge of a firearm that struck and killed Rochelle Poole, the mother of their two young boys, on Jan. 24, 2023, in Kwadacha, a remote Tsek’ehne First Nations community in northern B.C.
Poole was also Indigenous.
McCook was initially charged with second-degree murder, but Supreme Court of B.C. Justice Sandra Sukstorf acquitted him of that charge following his trial last year because the Crown failed to prove he intended to kill Poole while in his drunken state.
She gave McCook a sentence of six years and nine months at his sentencing hearing in Prince George last month, but he has just two years less six days remaining on his sentence after receiving credit for time served.
In her recently published sentencing decision , Sukstorf said the Indigenous sentencing factors established in McCook’s Gladue report were “significant.”
“The record demonstrates that Mr. McCook’s life trajectory has been shaped by systemic and intergenerational forces, including early removal from his family, family disruption associated with the legacy of residential schools, and the normalization of alcohol misuse within his social environment,” the judge wrote.
“These factors provide important context for understanding his background and inform the Court’s assessment of proportionality and the appropriate balance between denunciation, deterrence, rehabilitation, and restraint.”
Established by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Gladue principles direct judges to account for Indigenous offenders’ specific backgrounds and the broader systemic factors that contribute to their over-representation in Canadian prisons.
The day before the shooting, McCook and Poole travelled 425 kilometres south to Mackenzie, where they spent more than $600 at the liquor store and began to consume their alcohol on the long drive home, where they continued drinking upon arrival, according to court documents from McCook’s trial.
Kwadacha is a dry community that prohibits the transportation and possession of alcohol on its lands.
The pair stayed up all night and drank into the following morning, during which time McCook “consumed extreme quantities of alcohol over many hours and became profoundly intoxicated,” the judge wrote.
Witnesses that day said they could tell McCook had been drinking and seemed off, but added that there didn’t seem to be any friction between the couple and “described their interactions as calm and affectionate.”
About mid-morning, after McCook and Poole had returned from a drive around town with two of his cousins, one of them, Jason McCook, heard shots fired from the defendant’s residence two doors away. He looked outside to see McCook standing next to his truck with a rifle in his hands.
When he approached, McCook fired a shot in his direction, missing, but prompting his cousin to flee inside his home, which was then hit with another bullet.
The local emergency response centre was alerted and, as people arrived, Jason McCook was eventually able to sneak up on his cousin, subdue him and wrestle the gun from his hands.
Multiple officers and witnesses all described the drunk man as “incoherent, erratic, confused, and severely impaired immediately before and after the offence.”
“It was like no one was home, like the lights were on but no one was there,” his cousin testified.
Poole, meanwhile, was seated in the front seat of the truck, thought to be in a deep sleep after a night of heavy drinking, and it wasn’t until after the RCMP arrived that her death was discovered.
When a police officer opened the passenger door to check on her, “he observed that Ms. Poole had a visible facial wound, and upon closer examination, he concluded that she was deceased.”
Police determined that McCook first fired the weapon toward the vehicle from inside the family home, with the bullet hitting Poole in the head.
A post-mortem toxicology report measured her blood alcohol concentration at 0.281 grams per 100 millilitres, “a level consistent with severe intoxication and significant cognitive and motor impairment.” The judge said Poole, found with alcohol still in her lap, was “likely asleep, unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated” at the time of her death.
Police also found no evidence of what occurred between when the truck was parked and the shots were fired, nor any evidence that McCook knew his wife was seated in the vehicle at the time he shot the gun.
They also couldn’t establish whether he could even see into the truck from inside the home.
“While the forensic evidence established the direction of fire, it did not demonstrate visibility into the vehicle, deliberate targeting, or purposeful aim at Ms. Poole,” the judge wrote.
Defence counsel was seeking a sentence of five years, which would have left McCook with virtually no time to serve. The Crown wanted 16 years and argued that the fatal incident occurred within “a broader pattern of intimate partner violence… rather than as an isolated event.”
Because those matters didn’t arise during McCook’s trial, the judge granted a Gardiner hearing, which requires them to hear evidence to resolve disputed facts, thereby ensuring aggravating factors are proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Two witnesses, both Poole’s cousins, testified that she’d made past remarks about him being abusive. One of them said Poole once said something to the “effect that if she ever died, Mr. McCook would be the one who killed her.”
Sukstorf found the witnesses credible and their testimonies sincere, but ruled Crown counsel hadn’t proven it beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore could not be used to increase the sentence.
“On the evidence before me, I am satisfied that the relationship between Ms. Poole and Mr. McCook was marked by alcohol-fuelled instability,” she wrote. “The fact that the offence was committed against an intimate partner remains highly relevant to the sentencing analysis. However, the Crown has not established that the offence itself was the culmination of a pattern of intimate partner violence.”
Despite the mitigating force of his Indigeneity, the judge said the sentence still had to reflect the seriousness of taking the life of an Indigenous woman and intimate partner.
Other mitigating factors that led the judge to a sentence at “the lower end of the applicable range” were McCook’s lack of criminal record before the shooting, his remorse in custody and during trial, his efforts to rehabilitate while in custody awaiting trial and sentencing and the Kwadacha reintegration plan upon his release.
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