Woman jailed 12 years for elderly neighbour’s ‘vicious, random’ slaying

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/06/2017 (2495 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sentenced to 12 years in prison for fatally stabbing her elderly neighbour, Melissa Gabriel says she’s haunted by what happened that night.

In a hand-written letter provided Wednesday to the Free Press through her lawyer, the 37-year-old wrote she is “truly sorry.”

“I’m not a monster. I think about the victim every day, and how I would do anything to go back and make things right if I could,” she wrote in the signed note.

Gabriel pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the May 17, 2015, death of 89-year-old Dorothy Dykens, who lived down the street from her in St. Boniface.

Gabriel, heavily intoxicated, had been banging on her neighbours’ doors in the wee hours of the morning and was causing a commotion on Dykens’ doorstep on the 400 block of Tremblay Street. When Dykens opened the door, Gabriel stabbed her 68 times and left a knife in her back.

Just before 2 a.m., she called 911 in a rambling phone call, during which she told dispatchers “I killed the lady across the street,” court heard. Police found Dykens dead and a dog stabbed nearby.

During a subsequent police interview, Gabriel claimed to be a serial killer and said she was friends with the devil. She later told a probation officer she had no regrets, showing off her “no regrets” tattoo.

Provincial court Judge Ryan Rolston imposed the 12-year sentence Wednesday with credit for time already spent in custody, leaving Gabriel with nine years and nine months left to serve behind bars.

As she was led out of the Winnipeg courtroom by a sheriff’s officer, Gabriel told her family she loved them and called out: “My illness is not alcohol-induced!”

Gabriel has been diagnosed with several mental-health conditions, including schizophrenia and symptoms of the hard-to-treat anti-social personality disorder commonly known as psychopathy. Court previously heard she may have been suffering from some type of psychosis during the random attack, which happened after Gabriel stopped taking her medication and had been abusing alcohol and likely illegal drugs.

In this case, her mental illnesses were not a mitigating factor that should prompt a more lenient sentence, the judge decided after hearing from Crown prosecutor Sharyl Thomas during a sentencing hearing this spring that Gabriel had ignored the supports offered to her and hadn’t followed through with substance-abuse treatment.

Gabriel previously had more than 50 criminal convictions, 11 of them violent.

Rolston described Gabriel as a “ticking time bomb” because she was prone to violence while drunk. The judge acknowledged Gabriel had been a victim of physical and sexual violence since childhood, and her family members said she was “never the same” after she suffered a head injury that dislodged one of her eyes from its socket in 2006.

Before that incident, Gabriel had served time for forgery and robbery and was trying to turn her life around, defence lawyer Matt Gould said. She had earned her high school diploma and had completed her first year of college in business administration, but she left school due to her eye injury, court heard.

“It was well-known to Ms. Gabriel and her family that the combination of alcohol and lack of medication led to violent outbursts. Time and time again, Ms. Gabriel became involved in violence and other criminal activity,” the judge said.

“It must have been evident to her that alcohol heavily influenced her mental health, yet there is no evidence before the court that she tried to address the problem,” he added, saying she has allowed her illnesses to “remain unchecked,” and she’ll remain a danger to society until she gets the intervention she needs.

In her letter to the Free Press, Gabriel wrote she stopped taking her medication in March 2015 because of the side-effects but is back on medication and has “stabilized.”

“I thought I would be okay,” she wrote. “That was a terrible mistake and I truly regret it. I should have known better.”

The Crown had recommended a 15-year sentence, while the defence sought seven years.

None of the victim’s family or friends were present in court Wednesday.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay