The murderer of Quebecer Kim-Jessica Gagné, killed by her boyfriend in Toronto in July 2021, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 14 years. Bronson Lake was sentenced in a downtown Toronto courtroom in the presence of family and friends of the victim, who had traveled from Quebec.
“As the mother of the victim, there is never any sentence…whether it’s 14 or 16, it doesn’t matter: my daughter is no longer there. He shattered my life and that of my daughter,” sighed Manon Gagné, the mother of the victim. However, she said she hoped for a sentence of at least 15 years. “There isn’t a number of years that would have satisfied us,” continues Mélanie Lapointe, who had come to Toronto with Manon Gagné, her husband and a friend. “14 years is nothing. He can start a new life and have children,” she added.
The two women are the only ones to have delivered a victim impact statement in person in court. The experience brought relief to the victim’s mother. “It did me good to read it in front of him and say certain sentences, like what they would have had children”, she says. “You felt accomplished in your life as a woman and you felt ready to have children to pass on your knowledge to them and give them all the love they would need,” she said in French, at the lectern.
“Kim trusted few people. The accused gained his trust and I trusted him. I thought he would be a calm presence for the tornado that she was, ”said Mélanie Lapointe a few meters from Bronson Lake, sitting in the dock. “I can’t trust another man anymore,” she said. The two friends, she says, “did everything together”. “We worked together. We were traveling together”.
16 years required
In a brief address, Superior Court Judge Robert Goldstein said the sentence would have been longer had it not been for the 32-year-old defendant’s guilty plea in November. The sentence of at least 14 years was, however, deserved in particular because of the “brutal” nature of the murder, the judge said. Kim-Jessica Gagné succumbed to injuries associated with blunt trauma. Bronson Lake briefly apologized to the victim’s family before knowing his sentence.
The Crown was asking that Bronson Lake serve a 16-year sentence before being eligible for parole. She had not asked for more than 17 years – the maximum threshold for spousal murders of the kind, according to the prosecutor – since the accused had no criminal record and had pleaded guilty. “He abused the victim’s trust and killed him in the place where we imagine the safest, that is to say at home”, underlined on the other hand the prosecutor Paul Alexander.
Friends of 33-year-old Kim-Jessica Gagné were unhappy with the second-degree murder charges against Bronson Lake. According to the latter, the Crown would have informed them that the charges would be first degree – which would have earned him a longer sentence – to finally reconsider its decision. “I would have liked us to send a message [aux autres hommes] “, said in November Mélanie Lapointe.
A void in the family
The Crown prosecutor read several statements written by members of the victim’s family. “No one deserves what happened to my big sister,” said Pier-Olivier Pigeon. “Your absence hurts me so much,” he said. “Since the announcement of the death, I have lived in constant fear,” admitted the cousin of the victim, Geneviève Gagné. “Am I confident enough to sleep next to my spouse? If it was possible for Kim to be murdered, who is the shelter? she asks herself.
Manon Gagné and Mélanie Lapointe have spoken to each other almost every day since the death of Kim-Jessica Gagné last year. Sentencing, they say, allows them to “move on” even if they have not finished grieving. At least, notes her best friend, “the confrontation — of seeing him and his family — is behind us.”
This story is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.