David Staples and Ryan Cormier (Canwest News Service) – The four RCMP officers slain four years ago in Mayerthorpe, Alta., were “Canadian heroes,” said the judge who on Friday sent two men to prison for helping James Roszko ambush and murder them.
“These four RCMP officers . . . died in the course of those duties. These four men were Canadian heroes and will forever be remembered as such,”an emotional Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Eric Macklin told court.
“An attack on a police officer is an attack on society itself, and when a police officer is killed in the execution of duty, the community is understandably outraged.”
Shawn Hennessey is headed to prison for 15 years, and Dennis Cheeseman for 12 years, for what prosecutors called the single worst loss of life for the Mounties in a century.
Hennessey, 29, and Cheeseman, 25, both pleaded guilty on Jan. 19 to four counts of manslaughter in the March 3, 2005, deaths of Const. Anthony Gordon, Const. Leo Johnston, Const. Brock Myrol and Const. Peter Schiemann.
Hennessey and Cheeseman earlier had each been charged with four counts of first-degree murder, and now admit they supplied Roszko with a rifle, heard him talk about revenge against the RCMP, drove him close to his farm, dropped him off, and decided against warning the RCMP about the grave danger Roszko presented.
In the subsequent hours, Roszko made his way onto his farm, snuck into his Quonset hut and slaughtered the RCMP officers in an ambush. He then killed himself.
Hennessey never concocted any plan to kill police officers and he wasn’t present when the four officers were killed, Macklin said. But, he added, Hennessey believed it would benefit him if Roszko burned down his Quonset hut, the steel barn that housed a marijuana grow-operation that was linked to both Roszko and Hennessey and had been seized by RCMP investigators.
Mayerthorpe is about 130 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
“There was clearly an element of self-interest in Mr. Hennessey’s actions, which were all directed at distancing himself from anything that could link him to Roszko and the marijuana grow-op,” Macklin said.
Hennessey knew that armed conflict with the police was a possibility, Macklin said. “Any reasonable person would have known that Roszko’s return to his farm with weapons and ammunition in his agitated state created an extreme danger for the officers, a danger of receiving life-threatening injuries, a danger that was ultimately and tragically realized.”
Hennessey also selfishly got his brother-in-law Cheeseman involved in the matter, Macklin said. But Cheeseman did little more than ride along in the car, driven by Hennessey, that carried Roszko to his farm. “Mr. Cheeseman was little more than a bystander with knowledge of the danger to the police posed by Roszko.”
Recent Comments