Michael Shane Mattes
Image Credit: Contributed
January 09, 2013 - 1:15 PM
A Kelowna man who was involved in one of the most heinous stabbing deaths in recent Kelowna history is going back to jail for more work with a knife.
Michael Shane Mattes, 26, was one of three young men who beat and stabbed 57-year-old Kenneth Scully to death in January, 2005. Scully had just retired and moved to Kelowna. He was walking home from the grocery store with a friend when Mattes, Miles Levere and Jamie West stopped them to ask for a lighter. Scully and his friend realized something was wrong and turned to run. Scully was chased down and beaten by the three, then stabbed multiple times by West. Scully bled to death in a snowbank. The trio had no motive for the killing.
Mattes was sentenced to two years in prison for manslaughter but has since been released long enough to cause more havoc in the community. Provincial Court Judge Robin Smith recalled the Scully murder accurately when Mattes was back in court Tuesday to plead guilty to stabbing a friend with a kitchen knife.
According to Crown prosecutor Ed Petersen, Mattes started adding to his criminal resume almost immediately upon release including an assault on his girlfriend and the mother of his child. He was ordered to stay away from the girl but breached that condition on Sept. 16, 2011, when he showed up at her home early in the morning.
He tore off a sweater she was wearing and then put a steak knife straight through the biceps of another man who was there—a friend of Mattes.
The Crown wanted Mattes sent back to jail for seven months for the assault with a knife, plus another five months tacked on for several charges of breaching conditions, but Smith struggled with it, especially since once again a motive for the stabbing was absent.
"With this kind of a background, (seven months jail) is not much," he said. "I am hesitant on that one. When you think about all the circumstances—manslaughter which involved the stabbing of someone to death for no provocation even if he was not the one wielding the knife there… this is definitely worth some significant jail time."
Smith landed at 10 months for the stabbing and total of 14 months in prison for the remaining charges.
News from © iNFOnews, 2013