File Hills First Nations Police Service. Photo submitted
File Hills First Nations police are shedding light on a home invasion that left a man dead on Thursday.
Two homes were broken into on Little Black Bear First Nation late that night, and investigators say the suspect was violent and demanding drugs. The reserve is about 40 kilometres northwest of Balcarres.
Police Chief Lennard Busch says the suspect grabbed knives at the second home and got into a scrap with the homeowner, while four children he’d been caring for were asleep in separate rooms.
“The man in the second house, he said all of a sudden a man there was a man he didn’t know (who) burst into the house and grabbed two knives out of the kitchen area,” Busch said.
“A struggle ensued and at some point they fell to the floor in the bathroom and the man quit struggling with him.”
Police were alerted to the incident when the victim fled with the kids and called 911, saying the man had passed out. It turns out that man hadn’t just passed out – he’d died.
“We went up there, entered the house, and found the deceased in the bathroom laying on the floor with no apparent cause of death or trauma that we could see,” Busch said.
From there, the RCMP’s forensic services and provincial coroner were called in. Busch said the autopsy has revealed no physical cause of death, and toxicology results are pending.
The deceased has been identified as 38-year-old Jason Scott Stonechild, who is also known as Jason LaPlante.
Busch says there was a trail of destruction left from all of this that goes even farther than the death and trauma of the home invasions.
“There was a call that at first, we thought was unrelated, of a man on another First Nations community, had taken his girlfriend’s van and she wanted it back and it so happened that down the road from the house, there was a van in the ditch that matched the description.”
In Busch’s 37 years in policing, he says he’s never encountered a case this bizarre.