Homicide suspect makes brief court appearance
By Lethbridge Herald on May 18, 2022.
Delon Shurtz
Lethbridge Herald
45-year-old man accused in the city’s first homicide of the year made a brief appearance Tuesday in Lethbridge provincial court.
The accused, Sheldon Nicholas LePage, appeared by closed-circuit TV from the Lethbridge Correctional Centre, where he has been remanded since his arrest earlier in the month. His matter was first addressed Monday, without his attendance in court, but simply adjourned for a day.
LePage, who is represented by Lethbridge lawyer Tracy Hembroff, is charged with manslaughter, failure to comply with release orders and failure to comply with probation.
The charges stem from an incident at about 8:30 p.m. on May 5 when the 44-year-old victim, Amber Bahadur Khadka, was approached by a man near the intersection of 8 Street and 2 Avenue North. During an argument, the man struck Khadka, knocking him down and causing him to strike his head on the ground. The assailant left the area, but was found by police and arrested later in the day.
Police said the two men knew each other and the altercation was targeted at the victim. An autopsy May 9 confirmed the cause of death as a homicide.
The accused also faces previous, unrelated charges of assault and failure to comply with release orders. All the matters have been adjourned to May 31.
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9-8
“… The accused also faces previous, unrelated charges of assault and failure to comply with release orders…”
Not much more to say here! This has become the norm, people are charged, released, then arrested again and released again!
There is a growing problem on our streets of the street people using initimidation and assaults on the public when asked to move along, one trick is hanging out in groups so people fear approaching them. Not all, many are the ones that were shipped here like cattle from other centers that wanted to ‘dump’ there issues on another community. We have a large representation of Caucasion addicts the appearing in the last several weeks, one from Cranbrook, others from Calgary/Edmonton/Red Deer who were given free rides here! Many of these new people are angry and I would be too if I were shipped around, taken from my own area where I know people!
I have watched several of the same group committing crimes, the last one when I was in Park Place Mall came flying out of one store and burst through the doors to the street by the Juice kiosk, running across the street with an arm full of clothes. I wasn’t going to try to stop him, but watched where he went. I know security there has it all on CCTV and my health is more important. I saw 2 police on bikes dealing with another issues in Galt Gardens and walked over as I continued my walk and shopping downtown, but when I got close, thought, okay, so I saw someone running like his life depended on it, coming out of a store, knew he was a street person from previous experiences, but I can’t prove he stole anything. So I didn’t alert them! They were busy with another issue!
Seeing crime downtown is the norm and since the LPS had their budget cut by the last Council, I can’t blame the police. Often our city of 100,000 only has 8-10 officers on patrol. People complain when they have to wait so long!
Couple that with all the domestic abuse calls they have received during COVID, which continues, that doesn’t leave enough to cover our city!
Maybe we should cut police presence in the neighbourhoods of those that wanted to defund police!
At times like these, we should be increasing police budgets to deal with the matter and take back our streets!
Of course we also need to get our politicians to re-focus, do the job they were elected to do and stop trying to bring down governments that were elected, and start passing legislation to fix our judicial and penal systems which are both fractured/broken/almost useless!
Criminals are not being rehabilitated and many don’t mind getting charged, because the penalties are minor. There are no good deterrents!