A reader points to this Globe and Mail coverage of the multiple murders in Medicine Hat over the weekend. A 23 year old Jeremy Allan Steinke, and a 12 year old girl, whose identity is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, were arrested in Leader, Sk.
Now, three members of that family — Mr. and Mrs. Richardson, and their grade-school-aged son — are dead, killed in their tidy four-level house some time before Sunday afternoon, police say. The elder child, a girl, is not dead.
Of course, there’s always Google News, where memories last a little longer.
More here. (Parents – get the computers out into the family room, where you can watch what your kids do, ok?)
Really sad. Wonder what and how the media will report this story?
Regarding this David Dingwall-has anyone any news, been doing any investigation into this guy and his ‘associates,’ connections and inve$tment$ in the Medical-Pharmacutical-Medical Diagnostics-Bioscientific firms this guy and his NS Associates are involved in?
Dingwall was fired shortly after the multi-million dollar Cocaine bust in Glace Bay CB, NOVA SCOTIA importing coal on a CSL freighter for Nova Scotia Power-lots of talk about a connection to the Coke bust and the timing of Dingwall’s sudden, speedy departure from Canadian Mint and the Liberanos.
You say tomato, I say…
http://www.torontosun.ca/News/Canada/2006/04/25/1549366-sun.html
MEDICINE HAT — A 12-year-old girl — along with her 23-year-old boyfriend — are charged with the horrific murder of her family.
Mounties arrested the girl and Jeremy Allan Steinke, 23, on Canada-wide arrest warrants yesterday in Leader, Sask., and charged them with the first-degree murders of the girl’s mom, dad and younger brother.
The names of the dead family can’t be reported under the Youth Criminal Justice Act because it would identify the accused girl.
Reminds me of the St. Albert Family a couple of decades ago murdered by an early teenage family member. The media at that time was also prevented from naming the ‘suspect’ at the time. If I remember correctly, this event occured fairly early on, in the implementation of the Young Offenders Act.
Seem rather stupid to me at the time. This recent event seems no less so.
The public has EVERY RIGHT to know what is happening in their neighborhoods regardless whether or not the criminals are primary school or getting CPP!
CRB
Parents – get the computers out into the family room, where you can watch what your kids do, ok?
Excellent point. Folks gotta keep an eye on what thier kids are doing. It’s a HUGE part of being a parent.
Let me give you guys an insider view of the YCJA.
I am one of many Correctional Officers in a Young Offender facility in Ontario; or at least we USED to be. During the last Government’s tenure we saw our job titles changed to “Youth Services Officer”. That tells you exactly what our Liberal former Government’s attitude was towards young offenders; that they be “serviced”. We are are not even allowed to refer to them as “young offenders” when we report them for in-facility infractions. Now they are “young persons”. What a farce!
Right now, the public is outraged at the coddling that young offenders are receiving in this pathetic excuse of a justice system. I tell you, for the most part the public and the people on this blog only know a minuscle fraction of the outrageous coddling that goes on in these facilities in the name of “justice”. If you guys, and ESPECIALLY the victims knew the true extent (and I and many others have full memories of such numerous instances), many people would practically go insane at the thought and the justifications Ministry officials give to support all this coddling. Its too bad that I cannot give any specific examples, because we have to protect the right to privacy of these criminal thugs. But you guys know what I mean.
More and more stories are being reported of these young criminals; some of them robbers, rapists, and murderers serving jokes of a sentence and being released to live out the rest of their young lives; totally unconcerned and unfazed by the havoc they have wrought in their victim’s lives. I speak from personal experience when I say that all most of them are concerned about when they are put in jail is getting out and getting on with THEIR lives. I have witnessed countless times how these unrepentant thugs manipulate the system to their advantage while many of the people who support the perpetuation of this system either look the other way, or are willfully blind to their machinations.
Too many of these repeat young offenders are receiving “alternative measures” in sentencing, and its a big joke to them as they get ready to graduate to adult jails. The Liberals have been crowing that youth crime stats went down during their watch. There are many reasons why they think they can claim this, however, its so misleading its sickening. Arrests were down because our brother police officers, who are likewise sickened by this injustice system, have their hands tied because they are forced to comply with this alternative measures nonsense. And those repeat offenders that are eventually brought to a judge are often given non-custody sentences or just let off in the “care” of their parents. Do you have any idea how many of these young offenders breach the conditions of these laughable sentences? I’d wager over 90% of the ones that finally receive custody sentences and come into our jurisdiction have breaches among their charges.
More and more are guilty of violent crimes. More and more are joining gangs. They don’t care about counselling, they don’t care about rehabilitation. They don’t care about victims left in their wake. Hell, they don’t even care if they go to jail, because they know for a fact its a collosal joke.
So is building more facilities and jailing them longer the right idea? Will it help stop youth crime? Maybe, maybe not. But one thing is for certain. It will take these thugs off the street.
Grunt I agree with almost every thing you said. But the judges have to get on board. They seem to think that threats of punishment that are not followed up with action will work with these “children”. All it does it convince the kids that they can not trust adults, as they do not do what they say they are going to do.
I worked with high profile children in care [teens not place able into most homes} as a foster parent and spent many a day in the courts having to baby sit them as they went to court, so I got to see a good example of the mindset of our court system.
One youth in my care went back in front of the judge with 14 charges of breach of probation, after being arrested the night before. The judge gave him time served.
Another went up for shop lifting a bolt cutter, (he was on probation with a no burglary tool order) and it seemed like I was the only one in the court room that did not realize that he had stole a burglary tool, not just a chocolate bar.
All the kids I had {15 of them) had no fear or respect for the courts or the police.
I can’t say that I’ve ever encountered a publication ban quite like this one, where Canadian media sources are either naming the family but not saying what the girl’s connection to the family is, or they identify the girl’s connection to the family but say they can’t name the family so as to not identify the girl, even though other media sources name the family.
I don’t think that publication bans are necessarily wrong, but, this time around, the cat’s already out of the bag due to the ground rules of what is and isn’t covered by the publication ban being unclear. Plus, the print National Post giving the girl’s blog name can get you a photo of the accused in just a couple of seconds on Google.
Steve Brandon
You obviously don’t read the blogs. Not even this one!
The same thing happened in St. Albert some time ago when a 14 year old killed his family. 3, I believe in that instance also. I covered it above.
My point remains that the bans serve absolutely no purpose. The young offender is not held accountable, (read ALL of the information above) the public is not protected, and no one learns anything! Even later on the possible involvement of a young offender in a serious criminal event is hidden except in the most severe crimes.
Who benefits from this?
CRB
Steve Brandon
You obviously don’t read the blogs. Not even this one!
The same thing happened in St. Albert some time ago when a 14 year old killed his family. 3, I believe in that instance also. I covered it above.
My point remains that the bans serve absolutely no purpose. The young offender is not held accountable, (read ALL of the information above) the public is not protected, and no one learns anything! Even later on the possible involvement of a young offender in a serious criminal event is hidden except in the most severe crimes.
Who benefits from this?
CRB
I have the girls picture and name from Monday’s Calgary Sun. She looks like anyone’s sweet happy little girl. A tragic event to be sure. A dead family and a lost little girl. Very sad.
Regarding the site VampireFreaks.com and the comment “Parents – get the computers out into the family room, where you can watch what your kids do, ok?”
Yes, parents must be responsible. But it troubles me how little support parents get these days in discharging those responsibilities.
Once society as a whole worked to limit things that might “contribute to the delinquency of a minor.” Cartain magazines and books kept behind the counter. Broadcast standards and production codes that strove to protect “innocent eyes and ears.” Parents had society working with them to limit children’s access to things that would encourage dark fantasies.
But now society has no interest in supporting parents — not if it means some adults will have to deny their free expression of their fantasies. “And when did your kids become my problem” seems to be the attitude.
From all the media reports, these were parents who did try to do the right things for their children. But they doubtless found so many things just “out of our control” these days.
Perhaps if our communities were more vigilant about the kinds of things children can access, then we might not have to deal with so many youth offenders�
“limit things that might “contribute to the delinquency of a minor.” ”
/irony mode/
But PDJ, that’d be -JUDGEMENTAL-! And it would really interfere with the Liberal fantasy about kids not being damaged by all the sex, drugs and violence in their “entertainment”. We just can’t have that! You’re a (insert appropriate comment about conservative and/or religion = Nazi here.)
/. irony mode/
Heads are exploding all over Toronto, dude. Good one.
It’s a tragedy. What happened? happened. Maybe parents should watchout what their kids do on the internet. I blame the 23 yr old more. The 12 yr old was just under his spell. Kids esp girls are very vulnerable at this age. She’s only 12 yrs old. She’s going to regret this one day.
ok4ua wrote, “She’s only 12 yrs old. She’s going to regret this one day.”
My assumption is that a responsible society will work to create structures that will make it hard for 12-year-olds to do things they’re going to regret one day. At a certain level, *we* failed her and her parents by not asking often enough or deeply enough: how can we protect children from destructive impulses? How can we keep them regarding those impulses as perfectly normal and worth acting out or indulging?
And I don’t think spending millions on government-run day care spots is even a small part of correcting that failure�
The 12 year olds name has already been posted in the media….The media has been more of a burden than anything with this case…I am attending the funerals this weekend as the victims were very close friends of ours…The media has been going door to door in medicine hat looking for any info whether true or false…the poor families of the deceased are being hounded by the media also….the circumstances and brutality of this tragedy make dealing with our loss next to impossible, and the way the media handles it makes it much harder….the media just want a story…the deceased were beautiful people and their lives revolved around their children….the daughter had the computer taken away from her as her family had found her website and were shocked…they tried hard to monitor her as well as support her through her adolesence…we think we are immune to these tragedies…it is something you read about, or something that happens in some place where it is easy to simply make a judgement call…when it is someone you know,someone you love, and someone you know was good to their very core….well it really rocks your world…we can sit and anylize our legal system and judge how a parent should handle their children but when do we get to grieve? So many people I know have had a need to tell me how perfect a parent they are since hearing about our friends….maybe out of some insecurity…i Don’t know…I feel defensive for my friends I guess…I cannot stop playing every scenario through my head of what their final moments of terror must have been like…I want to grieve but these images get stuck in my head…probably should not be responding to some blog and probably have not stayed on topic…this is too close to home I guess…This is a sad sad tragedy and I need others to know that these were beautiful people with good values and beliefs…they treated their children well and tried to be realistic with the way todays world is and they tried to support their children through all their ups and down… The family of the victims and close friends and community need to know the cause of death…I cannot accept what I don’y know and knowing is vital to our grieving process…however horrible it was I just don’t want to be left wondering anymore….creating the scenarios in my head is far to painful and I truly believe I will get no closure until I know what happened…whether the public know their daughters name is a topic to be discussed later…We have been warned we will be hounded by media at the funeral…It saddens me that in this dark hour that the media will give us no peace…in closing I ask that if you have a God or higher power that you please pray for those who have passed, Debra, Mark and Jacob Richardson..Jacob was only 8 years old…far too young…please pray for them and also for the family and friends that we may begin the healing process…In love and light!