CALGARY — A Calgary woman wept as she was sentenced Monday to two additional years in a federal prison for pushing a Calgary teen to a grisly death between two cars of a light-rail transit train.
Natalie Pasqua had pleaded guilty to manslaughter for shoving 17-year-old Gage Prevost off the train platform during a fight over a $10 drug deal.
Before the sentence was handed down, she apologized to Prevost’s family, her voice faint and shaking.
“I pray for you, not to forgive me but to have some kind of peace in your lives,” she said.
“I did not know him. And I did not mean for him to die, but there’s nothing I can do.”
Pasqua, who is now 28, was initially convicted of second-degree murder, but successfully argued on appeal that the judge made a mistake in the charge to the jury.
Prevost’s father broke down as he described how he had to identify his son’s mutilated body at the medical examiner’s office.
“Seeing Gage lying on that slab ... will forever be burned in my memory,” said Dale Prevost.
Prevost accused Pasqua of taking away his future grandchildren. Friends and family who packed one side of the courtroom sobbed as he spoke.
Crown lawyer Bina Border argued that Pasqua should serve another two years on top of the equivalent of three years and four months she has already spent in custody, a recommendation also put forward by defence lawyer Christopher Nowlin.
Court heard that the argument over the drug deal escalated into a physical fight, with both sides pushing and shoving. Prevost pushed Pasqua off the platform onto the empty train tracks but she clambered back up to continue the brawl.
As the train came in to the station, both Prevost and Pasqua continued to push each other, but one shove from Pasqua sent Prevost between two cars where he was crushed to death.