The wife of a La Ronge restaurant owner who was brutally beaten to death in a botched 2017 robbery says she is disappointed one of the men convicted in his killing has had his sentence reduced.
The man, who was 17 at the time of the offence and cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was initially given a nine-year adult sentence because of his role in planning the crime, the severity of the offence and his recruitment of two others.
He had previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter, robbery and wearing a mask while committing an indictable offence.
However, last week, an appeal court judge reduced the sentence to seven years saying the trial court judge erred in not taking into account the man’s remorsefulness since being charged.
Simon Grant’s wife Cora Laich said she does not buy this argument whatsoever.
“The RCMP always said to us the only remorse he has is that he got caught,” she said. “That is the only bad that he feels about it all is that he got caught. He did apologize but he apologized just before he got sentenced.”
The appeal court decision also says the length of the initial sentence fails to take into account the man’s difficult childhood.
It notes his estrangement from his biological parents at an early age and the moving from foster home to foster home.
By the age of 12, he had begun using drugs and alcohol and was living in a tent when Grant and Laich took him in during the spring of 2016 at the age of 16.
In April 2017, they asked him to leave because of alleged threatening behaviour and the belief he was selling drugs out of their home.
Only a few weeks later, Grant was beaten to death with a baseball bat in his Louisiana Barbecue Restaurant.
(PHOTO: Cora Laich (left) and Simon Grant (right). File photo.)