Man admits to murdering teen

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This article was published 06/11/2017 (2563 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 17-year-old high school hockey player was murdered after he was set up under the guise of a drug deal, court heard Tuesday.

Nicholas Bell-Wright, 23, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the February 2016 death of Cooper Nemeth, admitting to shooting him in the head twice.

More than 500 volunteers searched for Nemeth throughout the city after he was reported missing, joining search and rescue and police efforts that included use of the Winnipeg Police Service helicopter, court heard.

Nemeth was last seen alive on the evening of Feb. 13, 2016, before he got into Bell-Wright’s 1997 grey Cadillac DeVille.

Crown attorney Mike Himmelman, as he read some details of what happened into the court record Tuesday, said Nemeth and the accused were “recent acquaintances” who knew each other through the illegal drug trade. Nemeth had been involved in selling Xanax pills, Himmelman said.

That night, “the accused suggested to the deceased that he could assist him in setting up a drug deal,” he said.

Instead, they got into a fight and Bell-Wright shot Nemeth while he was sitting in the passenger seat.

Around 2 a.m., 22-year-old Bell-Wright went home, put his clothes in the wash and tried to clean his vehicle with cleaning supplies, bleach and spray paint, court heard.

His mother and brother would later tell police about what he did after he got home in the wee hours.

Bell-Wright is scheduled to be sentenced after a full-day hearing in January that will give Nemeth’s family and friends time to explain the impact of his death to Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Glenn Joyal.

The Crown’s office had approved a direct indictment to send the case directly to trial, and a four-week jury trial was set to begin in May. A jury was set to be selected in April and Bell-Wright’s defence team had received permission from a judge to ask specific questions of potential jurors during the selection process.

But the case didn’t get to that stage before Bell-Wright was arraigned and entered his guilty plea Tuesday.

Nemeth’s body was found a week after he disappeared, in a garbage bin that had been pushed through a hole in a fence in a backyard along Bayne Crescent, about a kilometre from the accused’s home, the court heard.

The murder weapon — an airsoft gun that had been modified into a .22-calibre pistol — was found in the snow nearby.

Forensic DNA tests found Nemeth’s blood on the accused’s shoe, in his car and on the outside of a stolen van Bell-Wright was found in at the time of his arrest.

The chances that the blood on the inside tongue of Bell-Wright’s right running shoe came from a random member of the Canadian Caucasian population — someone other than Nemeth — was one in 2.9 quintillion.

Bell-Wright previously pleaded guilty to being in possession of the stolen van.

Police found Bell-Wright in the parked and running red Dodge Caravan when they arrested him in the hours after Nemeth’s body was discovered. He’d previously been taken in for questioning and released without being charged after giving police “inconsistent” details of what happened that night.

In April 2017, when he was given a suspended sentence with 18 months of probation for possession of a vehicle obtained by crime, court was told there was no evidence that Bell-Wright was the one who stole the van. Bell-Wright was on probation at the time of Nemeth’s death for assaulting a teen.

The minimum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca