Prosecutors seek adult sentence for teen in 2022 Main Street ‘killing spree’

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This article was published 07/07/2025 (455 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 54-year-old amputee, Marvin William Felix, was sleeping in his wheelchair in a laneway off of Main Street near the Bell Hotel when surveillance cameras captured two teenagers come across him on an early summer morning in 2022.

It was 4:38 a.m. and, with their arms around each other’s shoulders, the 15-year-olds at first looked like they might just be a couple of pals heading home after a late night.

But the pair had already brutally beaten two strangers and left them to die the morning of Aug. 22, 2022.

In Felix, they’d found their next victim.

Video played in court Monday showed the pair tossing Felix from his wheelchair before they punched, kicked and stomped on his head. They pulled him into the lane’s roadway and beat him further in the head and genitals, in a thrashing that lasted about a minute.

One of the teens, who Crown prosecutors Jodi Koffman and Lisa Carson are applying to have sentenced as an adult, could be seen tearing off Felix’s pants and the shoe he wore on his one foot.

The teen then tossed the pants to the other attacker and left Felix motionless on the ground, after one further kick to the head. Felix died in hospital days later.

The surveillance video was shown by prosecutors to Court of King’s Bench Justice Gerald Chartier, as they argued the brutality of the assaults requires the teen be given adult prison time, which would amount to an automatic life sentence.

“In less than an hour, one person had lost their life and two more were going to lose their life later on, as a result of the violence perpetrated by (the two attackers),” Koffman told court.

“Based on the heinous facts and the horrifying video footage, you can see why the Crown would give notice to seek an adult sentence for both of the accused.”

The man, now 18, admitted in January that he and the other teen attacked their three victims in and around Main Street in the early hours of Aug. 22, having absconded from their group home in Wolseley.

“Based on the heinous facts and the horrifying video footage, you can see why the Crown would give notice to seek an adult sentence for both of the accused.”–Jodi Koffman

No motive has been offered.

Danielle Dawn Ballantyne, 36, died that day, while Troy Baguley, 51, and Felix died later after being taken off life support.

The 18-year-old, who can’t be named because he was a youth at the time of the attacks, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of Ballantyne and Felix, and one count of manslaughter for Baguley’s death.

Koffman also showed video of the earlier attack on Baguley, which started the morning’s bloodshed at around 4:19 a.m.

The teens came across Baguley around 813 Main St., just south of Jarvis Avenue. The tape captured them kicking, punching and stomping on the man, pulling down his pants to expose his genitals and dragging him from the road into a parking lot. The attack lasted eight minutes. Baguley, who “lost complete cognitive capacity,” died in March 2023 after his next-of-kin approved him being taken off life support.

Two others, a then-13-year-old boy and a co-accused now in his early 20s, joined in the attack after coming across the scene by kicking the victim in the body. The 13-year-old later told police they were told by the attackers that Baguley was a “skinner” — street slang for a sex criminal.

As Winnipeg police responded to the attack on Baguley, they were told a woman had been badly beaten on the second floor of a nearby Jarvis Avenue apartment.

“There can be no question that these are exactly the types of offences and offenders that ought to attract an adult sentence.”–Jodi Koffman

Officers found Ballantyne lying on the floor in a pool of blood, while her belongings were strewn around the hallway in front of a suite. The attackers had pulled her pants down and exposed her underwear. Broken glass was on the floor next to her head. No surveillance tape captured the attack on the woman, who was pronounced dead hours later.

Prosecutors also played video of the attackers walking in and around Main Street, which captured the second accused wearing the pants his co-accused, being sentenced this week, tore off and stole from the victim.

Koffman called the bloodshed “a killing spree over the course of one night, where three vulnerable, completely innocent members of the public (were) subjected to horrific, gratuitous violence” and “ultimately lost their lives for no reason.”

“There can be no question that these are exactly the types of offences and offenders that ought to attract an adult sentence,” said Koffman.

The teen’s lawyer, Laura Robinson, is seeking a youth sentence.

She called clinical psychologist Sara Spevack, who works at the Manitoba Youth Centre jail and with the province’s fetal alcohol spectrum disorder justice program, to testify Monday.

Spevack twice conducted assessments on the man last year, which a medical doctor used to diagnose him with FASD. Spevack told court the man also has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a mild intellectual disability, with an IQ of 72. The average is considered to fall between 85 and 115.

The hearing continues Tuesday.

The other attacker, also 15 at the time of the fatal beatings, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in January in relation to the attacks on Ballantyne and Felix. Prosecutors intend to seek an adult sentence for him, too.

A charge against that teen related to Baguley’s death was stayed in January, with no explanation offered in court.

He is expected to be sentenced later this year.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Erik Pindera
Reporter

Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020.  Read more about Erik.

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