One of the men convicted for playing a role in the shooting deaths of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe ten years ago sought full parole Tuesday morning – an application that was granted.
Shawn Hennessey, 35, appeared before the Parole Board of Canada in Edmonton Tuesday morning.
Two parole board members, Marilyn Kenny and Ian Fowler, conducted the hearing.
At the start of Tuesday’s hearing, Fowler said the purpose of the hearing was to “assess risk, that’s our responsibility.”
During the hearing, the board talked to Hennessey about programs he had attended and counselling – asking him what he had learned.
Hennessey said he had recognized he was self-centred at the time of the massacre.
“My ego was in a place where it shouldn’t have been,” Hennessey said in the hearing, going on to say he now knows that at the time he was very impulsive, and that he had given no thought into the “consequences of actions.”
When asked about the impact of his actions, Hennessey used the words “tremendous” and “devastating” to describe the fallout from that tragedy.
“Four families have greatly suffered, I can’t imagine what they go through each and every day still,” Hennessey said.
Hennessey, and his brother-in-law, Dennis Cheeseman, pleaded guilty to manslaughter for giving James Roszko a gun and a ride to Roszko’s farm near Mayerthorpe in 2005.
At the time, four RCMP officers were guarding a Quonset hut on the property: Constables Peter Schiemann, Anthony Gordon, Brock Myrol and Leo Johnston.
On the property, Roszko ambushed and killed the officers, before killing himself.
In 2009, Hennessey was sentenced to 10 years and four months behind bars, and Cheeseman was sentenced to seven years and two months. Both lost appeals pushing for shorter sentences.
The decision to grant full parole Tuesday came after Hennessey was granted day release to a halfway house in the fall of 2014.
In 2013, Cheeseman was granted statutory release after serving two-thirds of his sentence. He’s since pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance, for having prescription drugs not in his name – he was fined $1,000 for that charge.
This was not Hennessey’s first attempt at getting parole; he applied for early parole in 2012, but was denied. Later, he was granted unescorted temporary absences to visit his family. He has a wife, Christine, and two daughters.
Conditions of Hennessey’s parole include abstaining from drugs and alcohol, to avoid persons suspected of being involved in criminal activity, and he’s restricted from the geographic area of Lac La Biche.
The mother of one of the RCMP officers killed in the shooting lives in the Lac La Biche area, and asked that Hennessey be barred from the area.
Hennessey’s statutory release was set for the end of December, 2015.
With files from The Canadian Press and Susan Amerongen
