Judge accepts plea deal, sentences killer to 12 years for ‘brutal cowardice’

A man who fatally shot a friend in the head in his Emerson home during a days-long drinking and methamphetamine binge in an act of “brutal cowardice” has been sent to federal prison for 12 years.

Ryan William Wiens, now about 30, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the March 1, 2024 killing of 48-year-old Michael Boyle on Monday in a Winnipeg hearing before Court of King’s Bench Justice Richard Saull.

“The offence was a brutal one,” said Saull of the slaying in the small border town. “This act was, plain and simple, an act of cowardice, there’s no other way to describe it. Brutal cowardice.”

Wiens, who moved from Steinbach to live in a room at the Emerson Inn in February 2024, had been drinking and taking meth for several days when he decided to take a case of booze to Boyle’s house and hang out early on March 1.

The two of them, who had known each other for about five years and socialized occasionally, spent several hours taking meth together while Wiens continued to drink, his defence lawyer Steven Brennan said, reading from an agreed statement of facts.

At about 9:45 a.m., Boyle went and got cigarettes, cookies and lottery tickets at a nearby convenience store, while Wiens stayed behind at the house.

When Boyle walked back into his own home sometime before 10 a.m., Wiens pulled out a sawed-off .22 calibre rifle and shot him once in the left eye while he was standing in the entranceway, Brennan said.

Wiens later told RCMP that Boyle was “coming at him” while holding a hatchet, but Brennan said the killing did not amount to self-defence. Mounties found Boyle lying on top of a hatchet, but whether there was an actual dispute or the shooting was simply a product of Wiens’ drug-induced paranoia is unclear, Brennan said.

Wiens was seen on surveillance video just before 10 a.m., walking back to his hotel, after he left Boyle to die on the floor. At the hotel, he met up with two other people and continued to drink and smoke meth and crack cocaine with them.

He told one of them that he had killed Boyle. She observed that he was experiencing a “near psychosis and that he was extremely high,” Brennan said.

Wiens and the two others he was using drugs with burned the overalls and mask he had been wearing that day before. Wiens also disassembled his sawed-off rifle and hid its pieces in the hotel.

He was arrested by RCMP later that night after they were called about a disturbance at the hotel, while other officers were called to Boyle’s house and found him dead.

Wiens was charged in the killing the next day and admitted he had shot Boyle. He told the Mounties he had been drinking and doing meth for days and was “f—king hammered” when he killed Boyle. He told them where to find the gun.

Crown prosecutor Michael Nerbas, who read several statements from Boyle’s loved ones in court that detailed their grief, said his family will have to live with his loss for the rest of their lives.

“Mike Boyle’s death was a tragedy and a significant loss to the family and the community,” said Nerbas. “Mr. Boyle leaves behind a family that loved him.”

Wiens had been charged with second-degree murder but instead admitted to manslaughter in what Nerbas described as a “true plea bargain,” considering issues with the Crown’s case.

Prosecutors found, given his level of intoxication, Wiens was not capable of forming the intent to commit a murder, but that he did have the intent to commit manslaughter.

Nerbas and Wiens’ defence lawyer jointly recommended the 12-year sentence, which Saull accepted. He’s to serve just shy of nine years going forward, considering time served pre-trial.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca