The victim of a brutal and deadly stabbing in her own home is being remembered as "giving and kind" and "always hopeful, always forgiving, always laughing."
Christin Marion West will also be deeply missed, her mother and sisters variously said as they read out victim impact statements Tuesday during a sentencing hearing for Dennis Daniel Gladue.
"I have lots of pictures of Christin but I cannot look at them without breaking down crying nonstop," said mother Beatrice West.
Gladue, 38, is facing sentence of life in prison without eligibility for parole for 15 years under a joint submission Crown and defence counsels put forward during the hearing at the Prince George courthouse.
He was arrested on Aug. 7, 2021, several hours after West's body was found in her first floor apartment in the 2000 block of 20th Avenue the same day.
According to an agreed statement of facts, West and Gladue had been in an "intimate relationship." West's mother had also been living in the same building and had last seen her daughter alive on August 1 when the couple had returned from a camping trip.
Beatrice West noticed Christin West's car missing from the building's parking lot on August 2 and repeatedly tried to call her over the next few days before reporting her daughter missing on August 6.
Friends and family also went searching for Christin West and went to an encampment in downtown Prince George where Gladue was known to be living.
When no sign of her was found there, they returned to the apartment and, when the building manager refused to let them into the unit where West was living, sister Nicole West made her way into the apartment via its ground floor window. Inside, they found West's body covered by a blanket.
She was 35 years old at the time of her death.
Armed with a description of West's vehicle and reason to believe Gladue would be found on 20th Avenue between Oak and Pine Street, due to a complaint from August 2 that he had been camping there, police found the car.
Shortly before 6:30 p.m., an RCMP officer noticed a man who turned out to be Gladue stumbling along the Hudson's Bay Slough trail with a can of bear spray in one hand and a large bottle of vodka in another. Gladue was taken into custody and a knife was found in his backpack.
Gladue was given a chance to sleep off his drunkenness in police cells and the next morning was given his Charter rights for a second time. Gladue waived his right to speak to a lawyer and provide his account of what happened to police.
Once back in Prince George following the camping trip, he said the two went to get liquor and then returned to West's apartment where an argument between them broke out.
The conflict was "over nothing," the court was told, but, according to Gladue, West nonetheless pulled a knife on him. He got the weapon away from her, the fight continued and West got the knife again. Gladue said he got the knife back once more and told her to stop, but she kept wanting to fight.
By then the knife was "up to her neck and he quote-unquote, just pushed it in," the court was told.
West started screaming and Gladue said he stabbed her a few more times to stop her yelling. Then, certain she would not survive the wounds she had already suffered, Gladue told police he continued to stab her so "she would die fast and not suffer."
By the end, West had been stabbed more than 30 times and many of the wounds were in her hands and arms, suggesting she was fighting to ward off the attack.
From there, Gladue covered West with a blanket and then poured bleach on her to cover up what he expected would be a smell. He then took a shower and then stayed in the apartment for about an hour before leaving in her car.
Gladue subsequently pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, which implies the act was committed on impulse rather than with planning and forethought, and at a "very early" point in the process.
Doing so, and so avoiding the necessity of an "extremely difficult" trial, combined with factors related to his Indigenous heritage would suggest 10 years without eligibility for parole, would be the "starting point," the court was told.
But that Gladue and West were in an "intimate relationship," pushed the range up to 12-15 years. A sentence in the the upper end of that range was further warranted by the fact that West was an Indigenous woman with "elevated vulnerability" who was murdered in her own home and that Gladue had a history of violent, alcohol-related criminal offending.
Indeed, Gladue had been released on parole roughly a year before the incident and appeared to have gotten his life back on track after landing a job in construction. But when he hurt his back, Gladue began self medicating with drugs and alcohol and had devolved into a "train wreck" by the time he was arrested.
Friends and family of West occupied much of the gallery in a small courtroom. Dressed in jailhouse reds, a sturdy-looking Gladue avoided eye contact with them as a sheriff guided him to the prisoners box and he kept his head bowed as Nicole West glared at him prior to delivering her victim impact statement.
"Time will never heal, time will never take away the night I found Christin," Nicole West said.
Exactly how he and Christin West met each other was not made clear but Beatrice West accused Gladue of taking advantage of her daughter's trust in him.
"My heart will hurt for her every day for the rest of my life," she added.
Given his chance to speak, Gladue limited his comments to a simple apology.
"I'm terribly sorry for what I've done, I wish I could take it all back," he said.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gordon Weatherill will issue his verdict this morning at the Prince George courthouse.
