Saskatoon man sentenced to 10 years in prison for fatal shooting ‘bordering on the bizarre’: defence lawyer

Attorney Greg Curtis says the facts surrounding a fatal shooting in 2020 “border on the bizarre.”

Dartagnan Whitehead, 18, died after being shot once in the chest with a sawn-off .303 rifle on July 11, 2020. On Tuesday, 21-year-old Stephen Swiftwolfe-Lewis pleaded guilty to manslaughter at King’s Bench Court. Judge Naheed Bardai accepted a combined sentence of 10 years.

Bardai learned the shooting occurred after members of two rival gangs – the Terror Squad and Westside Outlaws – were at two separate parties in the same building.

“It’s almost bizarre that those events happened,” Curtis said.

“That two rival gangs end up on opposite sides of a duplex.”

Police tape surrounds a home in the 100 block of Avenue K South on July 11, 2020, where Dartagnan Whitehead was shot and killed. (Morgan Modjeski/CBC)

Whitehead, a member of the Westside Outlaws, had been to a friend’s birthday party that night. April Littlecrow, who lived in one of the units, spoke to CBC.

Littlecrow said she knew trouble was coming when she found a room full of people in red at her house next door at 121 Ave. K South.

It was the early morning hours of a Saturday.

“There were a lot of them, seven, eight, dressed in red. I backed out because it scared me,” she said in a 2020 interview.

Littlecrow said the red colors are associated with the Westside Outlaws gang.

She returned to her unit to warn her son, Swiftwolfe-Lewis, who she believes is a Terror Squad member. She spoke to him, his sister, and another man.

“Guys, don’t go to the neighbors, there are a lot of haters there,” she said.

“And then they went to the neighbors.”

Littlecrow said she heard a gunshot a few moments later.

“I heard screaming and all I could think was that something serious had happened,” she said.

A difficult childhood

Whitehead’s mother, Lois Ahpay, read a statement in court in which she described her son as a “happy, caring, loving and generous person.” She said her world had been shattered by his death and that she struggled to maintain the sobriety she had achieved in the years before his death.

“I don’t know how to deal with the pain that I carry with me,” she said.

“I’m trying to find forgiveness. I can’t and I don’t want to.”

Curtis said Swiftwolfe-Lewis lived with his grandmother until she died when he was 10. At age 16, he moved to live with his mother in Saskatoon, where he was given drugs to sell and recruited into a gang.

Curtis said it was not a premeditated gang robbery and that Swiftwolfe-Lewis had never met Whitehead. Swiftwolfe-Lewis was drunk on drugs and alcohol and fired the high-powered shotgun through the open doorway into a crowded house.

Judge Bardai described the event as “completely avoidable”.