A 13-year-old Saskatoon boy involved in the fatal shooting of his 12-year-old friend in 2024 has pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death.
It happened in a house on Matheson Drive on Feb. 19, 2024, when three boys, two 12 and one 13, were drinking vodka and passing around a loaded sawed-off .22 rifle.
The gun went off, killing one of the 12-year-olds. The two other boys were charged with manslaughter, but the surviving 12-year-old pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death last year and was sentenced to stay in custody for 16 months, followed by eight months of intense supervision in the community and then 12 months probation.
The 13-year-old is scheduled to be back in court in July for sentencing.
“Nobody wanted this to happen. There was no plan, it was kids making poor decisions, playing with something they shouldn’t be playing with and it went off and killed somebody,” Blaine Beaven, the boy’s lawyer, said Monday in an interview.
“Obviously they’re playing with a gun, they never should be, children never should be playing with a gun and people who are intoxicated should never be using firearms. And one of them ended up getting shot.”
An agreed statement of facts was presented at the 12-year-old’s sentencing.
It said the boys were in a bedroom inside of the house on Matheson Drive. They had bear spray and a sawed-off rifle. All three were posing, taking photographs and videos with the firearm in an effort to appear as though they were gangsters.
“As a part of the investigation, officers seized cellphones belonging to [the boys]. [Saskatoon police] analyzed the phone data that was extracted from the cellphones. Upon review of the videos and photographs taken from that night, you see [the boys] had been drinking from a 26 oz bottle of Absolut vodka over a period of approximately three to three-and-a-half hours,” it said.
“During this time you see [the boys] take turns pointing the firearm and bear spray at one another. [The 13-year-old] is seen unloading and loading ammunition into the firearm.”
Time code on the final video viewed by police showed it was recorded less than a minute before the shooting, the facts said.