Robyn Iain Beaquregard lost his son Eli this weekend. Now he wants other teens to learn from his son's decisions.

(KATHY MICHAELS / iNFOnews.ca)

Robyn Beauregard has learned one thing in the years since his teenage son was killed in a Kelowna parking lot.

Nothing will numb the sting of his loss. Not that his son’s killer pleaded guilty, not that she will soon be sentenced, not even time itself.

“I’ve learned through this process with this happening, that this is one of those things you will never get over,” he said Tuesday, the day his son’s killer was scheduled to be in court for a pre-sentencing report.

“It will always be there and I have learned to live with it.”

The teen who killed Eli Beauregard June 27, 2019 pleaded guilty in February to manslaughter. Her identity is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act and she’s awaiting sentencing.

It’s something Beauregard doesn’t think will amount to much or, at the very least, enough. For one, there’s a wide array of possible sentences for manslaughter, which is defined as “a homicide committed without the intention to cause death, although there may have been an intention to cause harm".

Also, she’s being sentenced as a youth. Robyn thinks she should have been elevated to an adult. 

“There’s no way she could have broke a bottle, did what she did and not thought she could kill someone,” he said.

Eli, he said, was stabbed in the arm and while in the hospital it was amputated. He fell into a coma and never woke up.

Robyn said that he’s learned in the months since his son’s death that there were more drugs and alcohol in the mix than he realized, which he’s frustrated by but is trying to get past.

“I can’t stew... can’t be angry about Kelowna having a tent city with children in it, or that someone with drug and mental health problems was not taken off the street,” he said.

What he wants to do, he said, is remind people that they should hold their children tight at those times when it seems its hardest.

Eli, he explained, was pushing boundaries. He was living in a shelter and pushing around his possessions in a shopping cart. When he died he had a small amount of methamphetamine on him, despite having assured Robyn just a week earlier that he was only smoking a little pot.

“Maybe another family going through something similar can know, to hold that child a little closer, let them you know you care and it’s a temporary thing, and doesn’t have to be a permanent problem,” he said.

“When you lose a child you have to live with it forever. It never goes away. I will be totally fine at home or at work, and then I will watch a movie or someone will say something he said to me and it just all comes up again. It never goes away. I hope that girl knows that. I hope that she knows I wake up every day knowing that my son never got the chance to be an adult.”

He said the courts have asked him to take part in a reconciliation process with his son’s killer but he can’t bring himself to do it. He still can’t reconcile himself with the fact that he will never see his son again, let alone do more.

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