Top 10 murder rates by city (per 100,000 population):
Regina: 5.0;
Billy Jack Bird pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the vicious beating death of 71- year-old Selina Nellie McIntosh and aggravated assault for the attack that left George Alexander McIntosh, 74, in a coma. He has never regained consciousness.
“It is incomprehensible how such violence could be directed to these kind and gentle people,” Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Ellen Gunn said, in accepting the joint recommendation of life in prison with no chance for parole for 20 years on the second-degree murder conviction. Bird will serve a 10-year concurrent sentence for aggravated assault.
Recounting the facts of the case in court, Crown prosecutor Kim Jones said George had been giving money to people in the couple’s North Central neighbourhood for about two years, “out of kindness or attempts not to be bothered,” and had given Bird $800 a few days before the attack.
On July 1, 2004, Bird went to the couple’s Princess Street house to ask for more money and became enraged when George refused to give it to him. Court heard that Bird “snapped,” ripped the phone out of the wall and hit the elderly man until he was unconscious.
When Selina entered the room, Bird began a vicious beating that continued in almost every room in the house, the court was told. Bird then removed the woman’s pants and underwear and masturbated above her body in what Jones called “an act of utter disrespect.”
Selina was able to put on a pair of sweat pants before she died.
Police later found Bird’s bloody shirt and jewellery he’d stolen from the house inside a nearby dumpster.
He was interviewed by police and ultimately confessed to the crime.
Court heard George and Selina McIntosh had been married 37 years, and had two children and three grandchildren. Both had survived cancer and Selina had Alzheimer’s disease. Their son discovered the couple’s bodies on July 2, 2004, after being unable to reach them by phone all day.
Court heard the house was found ransacked and in complete disarray, with blood throughout the home and the bedroom door ripped off its hinges.
Selina McIntosh was dead at the scene and had facial injuries, a broken nose and cuts around her lips, mouth, cheeks and chin. Her larynx was fractured and many of her ribs were broken, puncturing her lung. She died from severe trauma to her head, chest and extremities.
George McIntosh was taken to hospital in critical condition, having received a broken jaw, facial injuries and a severe head injury that has left him in a persistent vegetative state.
“This home invasion was an act of unspeakable horror,” Jones told court, calling the attack “a brutal and senseless crime.” In a victim impact statement read aloud in court, the couple’s son said few people could understand the experience of finding their parent’s “murdered, lifeless bodies” inside the family home.