2 days ago
Killer pleads guilty to manslaughter, admits shooting young mother selling drugs
Ava Marie Zaber was at home with her partner and their four-year-old son at 1:22 a.m., Nov. 21, 2023, when she answered a Facebook message from someone asking if she had any drugs to sell.
Zaber, 20, confirmed she did and provided the prospective buyer with her address.
Twenty minutes later, Zaber was dying, shot at close range on a stairwell as she was returning to her second-storey suite on Burrows Avenue.
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Ava Marie Zaber, 20, was shot on the 400 block of Burrows Avenue early on Nov. 21, 2023 and died in hospital, Winnipeg police said.
Her killer, 21-year-old Brent Jayden Meade, pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter. Crown and defence lawyers are jointly recommending he be sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Meade will be sentenced at a later date following the completion of a court-ordered Gladue report examining his Indigenous background and upbringing.
'My words of advice for you is to be very co-operative with the probation officer (preparing the report),' Kings Bench Justice Ken Champagne told Meade.
'They are doing this to assist the court, your lawyer and the Crown' in determining whether 15 years is an appropriate sentence.
According to an agreed statement of facts provided to court, taxi security video showed Meade entering a taxi at 1:39 a.m. and being dropped off outside Zaber's home at 1:41 a.m. He returned to the taxi two minutes later and it drove away.
What happened in those two intervening minutes wasn't captured on security video.
'Meade is pleading guilty that he attended to the front door of (the house) and discharged a handgun one time at Zaber as she was climbing the interior stairs leading to her suite,' says the agreed statement of facts.
Meade was arrested Dec. 6, 2023, at a home on the 500 block of College Avenue, five blocks north of where Zaber was shot.
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Court did not hear what sparked the killing or what relationship, if any, there was between Zaber and Meade.
Zaber's mother, Donna Rusnak, told the Free Press last year Meade had been dating one of his daughter's friends.
Meade was originally charged with second-degree murder. His guilty plea to manslaughter comes months after pre-trial proceedings held earlier this year.
Meade was free in the community on a release order at the time of the killing, having been charged the previous summer and fall with a series of offences including uttering threats, break and enter and mischief to property.
Dean PritchardCourts reporter
Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.
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