A woman who pleaded guilty to manslaughter after fatally stabbing her common law partner in 2018 will avoid jail if she stays on good behaviour and follows court-ordered conditions.
In Vancouver Provincial Court on July 13, Shannon Marie Watts received a suspended sentence with conditions, including curfew, counselling and three years probation.
“This whole matter can't be characterized as anything but tragedy,” Judge David St. Pierre said in court.
Watts was 24 when she stabbed 26-year-old Shane John Tolmie in the chest once with a kitchen knife during a drunken argument in a Downtown Eastside apartment on June 28, 2018.
Watts, Tolmie and their two children had travelled earlier that day from Nanaimo to Vancouver, where Watts lived at the Sorella housing project at Abbott and Pender. Watts and Tolmie had reunited, after Tolmie’s time in Nanaimo recovering from being struck by a car. Tolmie accused Watts of being unfaithful to him while he was on Vancouver Island. An argument escalated from words to actions, with Watts picking up the knife.
She was arrested and released the next day, and the children apprehended by the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
Tolmie was kept on life support at hospital until July 1, 2018 when he died. Watts was originally charged in October 2019 with second degree murder. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter in August 2020.
“Mr. Tolmie was a loved member of his family. By all characterizations, a good father, and he deserved a chance to become a better person, learn and grow the same as everybody else,” St. Pierre said. “That's not going to happen, and that's tragic.”
Watts reacted to his death with numerous admissions in Facebook posts, claiming she did not mean to kill Tolmie. She expressed sorrow and remorse for her actions and feared she would be jailed and never see her children again.
“I wish there was a reverse button, so I could have made better choices,” she wrote in one of the messages.
Court heard that Watts grew up in Prince Rupert in a Nisga’a family whose elders were residential school survivors. She suffered abuse and neglect and witnessed parental substance abuse. She lived in 100 different foster homes in 20 to 30 communities from age 1 1/2 to 17 and became an alcoholic in her early teens. Watts became sober in May 2019, attended regular counselling sessions for mental health and addiction, received treatment for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and went to work as a part-time flagger.
Given the opportunity to address the court, Watts said: “I understand that his family wants nothing to do with me. And I respect that 100 per cent, I understand their fears. I apologize for the wrongs that I've done, the pain that I caused.”
St. Pierre chose not to impose a jail sentence, acknowledging court precedents requiring leniency for Indigenous women, who are over-represented in Canada’s prison population. He also cited Watts’s remorse and her lack of criminal record or subsequent offences.
“Miss Watts did not intend to cause the death of Mr. Tolmie, but she did, and she has to deal with the consequences of that,” St. Pierre said.
Under the three-year probation order, St. Pierre ordered her to live under a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew every day, except if her probation officer consents to different hours due to employment or other compelling reasons. He banned Watts from possessing or consuming any drugs or alcohol, except as prescribed by a doctor, and not to enter any licensed establishment that excludes minors.
