Another man has been sentenced for the homicide of Adrian Snider. Tommy Paul plead guilty to manslaughter earlier this month, and was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison in court in Edmonton Wednesday.
His sentence follows the eight years given to Dominic Decque on the same charge last Friday in Grande Prairie. According to an agreed statement of facts read at Decque’s sentencing, all three men were part of a drug trafficking and prostitution operation run by Dominic’s brother Patrick Decque out of a duplex in Hillside in March 2015.
Patrick suspected Snider was responsible for a missing gun and $1,500 cash and gave Dominic handcuffs and a metal pipe to “deal with him”. The next day Dominic and Paul hit Snider in the head multiple times with the pipe, handcuffed him, and stuffed a sock in his mouth.
According to the Edmonton Journal, when Snider appeared to stop breathing, Paul tried to give him chest compressions. The 25 year old passed away, and Patrick ordered the house cleaned by two escorts and the body buried in a farmer’s field the next day.
In his sentencing decision, the Journal reports Justice John Gill took into account factors of Paul’s Indigenous background, his guilty plea, remorse, and efforts to save Snider. Gill gave him 53 months credit for time served since his arrest in May 2015, which means he has roughly 3.5 years left to serve.
Patrick Decque has fired his lawyer citing irreconcilable differences, and his trial for charges of manslaughter and accessory to murder this June has been called off. He’ll be back in court on June 11th to set his next trial dates, which will likely be for June 2019.
One of the escorts who cleaned up the homicide scene, Courtney McQuinn, will be back in Grande Prairie court in August for her accessory to murder after the fact charge.