Manslaughter conviction upheld in Calgary chef’s murder

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The seven-year sentence imposed on an accomplice in the murder of a Calgary chef was justified, Alberta’s top court ruled Tuesday.

In a unanimous decision, a three-member panel of the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld the sentence imposed on Tommie Holloway for manslaughter for his role in the murder of Christophe Herblin.

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“We see no reason to overturn the decision,” Judge Peter Martin said, rejecting defense lawyer Kim Ross’s bid to impose a lesser punishment for Holloway and agreeing with Crown prosecutor Elisa Frank that the sentence should stand.

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Ross argued that King’s Bench Judge Blair Nixon was wrong to find that Holloway would have known Herblin was at serious risk of bodily harm when he took him out of his under-construction restaurant where his accomplice, Anthony Dodgson, fatally stabbed him.

He also said Nixon did not give enough weight to Holloway’s Indigenous background and put too much emphasis on aggravating factors and underplayed mitigating ones.

“A sentence of three to five years would have satisfied all the principles of sentencing,” Ross said.

But Judge Alice Woolley said Nixon’s conclusion that Holloway would have foreseen the possibility of Herblin suffering serious injuries, putting him in a higher category of manslaughter, was correct.

Ross argued that Holloway would not have known whether Dodgson would encounter resistance from Herblin and resort to stabbing him, or whether the threat posed by the accomplice would be enough for the chef to leave the area.

Woolley said Herblin’s stabbing was a “predictable outcome” and that Nixon did not have to find there was a certainty of bodily harm, just a risk.

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Holloway was convicted by a Calgary jury on a reduced charge of manslaughter for his role in the fatal stabbing of Herblin on March 14, 2020 outside a shopping center in the city’s southwest.

He had faced the same second-degree murder charge that the jury ultimately found Dodgson guilty of.

The two men had broken into Herblin’s Croque Saveurs bistro, which was under construction, to gain access to an adjacent cannabis shop.

When the alarm sounded they fled and Herblin, after calling the police, went to the scene.

After the officers left, the victim remained at the scene and when Holloway and Dodgson returned three hours later and realized Herblin was still there, the former vandalized the victim’s parked car, luring him outside where he was stabbed. fatally.

Dodgson, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a minimum of 12 years, appealed both his conviction and sentence.

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