A father and son were sentenced Monday to lengthy terms in prison for an attempt to murder a woman suspected of blowing the cover on a drug-dealing operation posing as a smartphone repair shop.
James Stanley Filiatrault, 55, was sentenced to nine years and William Thomas Filiatrault, 23, was sentenced to seven years for the Nov. 5, 2016 incident in which the two coaxed the woman into their pickup truck, drove out to a forest service road and attacked her with a machete.
It occurred a day after RCMP executed a search warrant on the store, which was located on Third Avenue and just two doors away from the needle exchange. Four people were arrested and quantities of various "street drugs" were seized.
The woman, whose identity is protected by a court-ordered publication ban, was suspected of being a "rat" and the Filiatraults, who trafficked out of the store but were not the leaders of the operation, were ordered to kill the woman, the court was told.
A local street person was convinced to buy a machete from a nearby store and the woman was tracked down to a home of a friend. She refused to follow them outside but the two found her again later the same day near Third and George and told her she needed to come with them to do a job and clear her name.
They drove about 75 kilometres east of the city on Highway 16 and then a about seven kilometres along the Bowron Forest Service Road before coming to a stop. The three got out and when the woman heard William had the machete in his hand, she begged him not to kill her. They told her to shut up and said that was not their intent.
They walked a short distance from the truck and William hesitantly poked the machete at her chest, giving her a small cut. He handed the machete to his father who, in turn, repeatedly hit the woman before she was able escape and hide in the ditch alongside the road.
The Filiatraults drove up and down the road looking for her but soon gave up and drove back to Prince George. Even though she was bleeding from head to toe, had sustained a series of life-threatening skull fractures and had lost her shoes, the woman was able to walk out to the highway in the dark where passing drivers saw her and called the RCMP.
The driver of an eastbound semi truck pulled over to help her out, as did a couple with children in a pickup truck heading west. With its flashers on, they headed towards Prince George until meeting up with an RCMP officer and ambulance personnel.
The women identified the Filiatraults as her attackers and the RCMP, who knew where they were living, arrested them the next day, while a subsequent search of their motel room uncovered packaging for the machete and clothing with the woman's blood on it.
The two had initially denied committing the act but in April 2016, while an officer was in the process of obtaining a DNA sample from him, the father made an unrecorded comment he had no choice but to do what he had done to the woman. A week later, he admitted the act on record, telling the RCMP that it was an "ordered hit" and he had to do it because his family had been threatened.
He also took responsibility for planning the attack, added William was substantially impaired by drugs at the time, and expressed regret and remorse for what he had done. By July 2017, the two had pleaded guilty to attempted murder, negating the need for a trial in which the woman would have had to testify.
Crown prosecutor Tyler Bowman did not get into details but told the court that James' claims of duress were "not unfounded."
"Certainly, he had other options available to other than taking the steps that he did but this isn't a situation comparable to say, a young drug dealer trying to make a name for himself or something like that," he said. "There is some evidence of pressure being applied on James to do this to save his family in a way that was obviously severely misguided."
The court was also told the father has a dated criminal record and suffers from a brain injury while the son spent most of his formative years growing up in the VLA and had been drinking and doing drugs since age 14. Expelled for taking drugs onto school property, William has achieved only Grade 8.
