deadmonton 2006 - shane william chalifoux
Shane William Chalifoux, 18, died October 1st, 2006.
Eugene Michael Falle, 32, was charged with second-degree murder.
Shortly before 11:00 p.m. on October 1st, 2006 police took a blood-soaked man into custody after using a Conductive Energy Device to take him off a building ledge, ending a brief stand off.
Police were called to the Wyser Manor rooming house at 9518 102A Avenue at 9:40 p.m. when a disturbance report came in stating there was a dead body inside a suite.
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Upon arrival officers saw the upper-half of a man's body hanging face-down out a third-floor window. While attempting to enter the suite, police found the door barricaded with a couch.
When officers broke the door down with a battering ram, a man went outside onto a ledge and threatened to commit suicide. Clad only in jeans, the man braved chilly temperatures of 7 C for almost an hour.
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A higher-resolution version of the Shaughn Butts/Edmonton Journal photograph can be viewed here.
From the ledge he was heard to yell, “One down and more to go.”
At one point the man pretended to jump. As he tried to get back into the building through another suite, police used a Taser on the man.
The blood-covered man, known as "The Preacher" on the street, was then taken into custody.
Eugene Michael Falle, 32, was charged with second-degree murder.
Area residents told 630 CHED Radio the man was a self-proclaimed street preacher who was trying to rid the building of drug dealers.
Sources told the station the man had begun boarding up his suite and was carrying a knife in the days before the slaying, fearing for his life.
On the night of the murder a man climbed along the side of the building trying to get in.
The source said the altercation began when the man broke into "Preacher's" suite.
Robin Reid, a tenant who lived beside Eugene Falle, told CTV Edmonton she knew the victim as "Shane," a man in his twenties.
"Last night he wanted to go through my window to go into Eugene's to talk to him."
Reid said Shane climbed out her window and went into the suite to talk to an upset man. It was the same suite where a body was later found.
Reid later heard a man on the ledge shouting, "Come on, anybody else, come on."
The woman said she believed Eugene was responsible for Shane's death.
"I know he did it to him. He's been acting pyschotic and saying ' I'm ready to go home to God.' "
Reid also believed both men were drug addicts.
A man who lived in the building was interviewed by Global Edmonton.
He said the man in custody had a steady stream of visitors.
"I went in to visit him a couple times ya know he always carried a knife and stuff, eh."
"He always had a weapon on him and something against the door waiting for someone to come in, eh."
Warren Helmers, a resident of the recently-renovated 20-suite building, was interviewed by CTV Edmonton.
"Do you want to know why the guy's dead?"
"It's because the goddam place is filled with the most godawful dangerous sick psycho sons of bitches -- just walk through there on a daily basis," Helmers challenged a reporter.
The highly-quotable Helmers was also interviewed by Global Edmonton.
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"This is the junk, junkie central of this neighbourhood."
"Right here what you're looking at is the head office of all the junkies and all the drug dealers in this part of the neighbourhood."
"When this place opened up, this neighbourhood changed. I used to get offered drugs maybe three times a year. I now get offered drugs three-four-five-six times a day!"
"I wish you guys on the news would get the cops busy cleaning this damned place out."
Area regulars refer to Wyser Manor as "the well-known crackhouse."
Wayne Spear, rental manager of Gateway Inn and Hotel next door, described the building as a "war zone," adding "I just wish they'd close it down."
Wyser Manor, which was formerly known as Urban Manor, re-opened in April 2006.
The owner of the bulding, Terry Draginda, said Eugene Falle was a good tenant who always paid his rent and had been living there since it re-opened. A source told the Edmonton Journal Falle lived at the Herb Jamieson Centre before moving into the rooming house.
Wyser Manor was refurbished at a cost of 1.2 million dollars, $925,000 of which was provided by the Edmonton Housing Trust Fund on the condition the owner would provide twenty affordable apartments.
Draginda and a Trust Fund spokesman both agreed screening procedures for prospective tenants of the building needed to be improved.
Draginda said he recently evicted five "problem" tenants, and he told the Sun a visitor died of a drug overdose in September while a former tenant and her friends continued to party around her corpse.
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Homicide detectives left the body of the victim in place for more than twelve hours as they investigated Edmonton's 26th murder of the year.
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Police said the body had to remain where it was so that a forensic team could properly process the scene and not disturb its integrity.
On October 3rd police released the identity of the victim: 18-year-old Shane William Chalifoux.
An autopsy held October 4th revealed Chalifoux died from blood loss due to multiple stab wounds.
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The man known on the street as 'Preacher' had a past most unworthy of his nickname.
The Edmonton Sun obtained a copy of an internal police memo that described the 32-year-old's criminal history as "an escalation into brutality, sadism and use of extreme violence to achieve his goals."
In a story published in the paper October 4th, the Sun said Falle was found guilty of terrorizing and brutalizing two victims on separate occasions in Victoria, British Columbia.
He was sentenced to four years and five months in prison in April 1996.
The crimes occurred when Falle was collecting on a $200 drug debt and he slashed a man's face from earlobe to throat. 44 stitches were needed to close the wound.
The man suffered kidney damage ten days later when Falle and several thugs came back, beat him, kicked him and cut off his ponytail. They also kidnapped the man's girlfriend.
In 1997, Falle was convicted of sexual interference for fondling the breasts of a 13-year-old girl in Burnaby, B.C.
Two psychologists who assessed Falle called him a psychopath who posed a high risk of violence.
After Falle's sentence expired in September 2000, he was bound by the conditions of a one-year Section 810 recognizance order. When he moved to Edmonton, Falle was monitored under the police high-risk offender program.
In less than a year into the peace bond, Falle was part of a home invasion in which six people were held captive. The June 2001 attack took place at 9304 132A Avenue.
Falle was tracked by a police dog near the scene of a stolen car crash police believed was linked to the home invasion.
In 2003 he was acquitted on six counts of unlawful confinement, five counts of robbery with a firearm, possessing a weapon and wearing a disguise. A judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence that Falle was the man from the car.
Due in part to that acquittal, Edmonton police didn't apply for an extension of the Section 810 order when it expired in September 2001.
On October 5th, 2006 the Sun published a story that suggested Chalifoux and Falle were members of rival gangs.
The story stated that Chalifoux was a member of the Alberta Warriors, while Falle was a member of the Redd Alert gang.
The newspaper quoted Len Untereiner, president of the Spirit Keeper Youth Society.
"The reason that Shane is dead is that he got involved in drugs. You get involved with drugs, you don't have a high life expectancy," observed Untereiner.
Untereiner told the Sun he knew Chalifoux as a typical "young gang-banger" getting quick cash by selling drugs.
"He hooked up with a gang and ended up being a (drug) user. And when they start using, they have to deal to get the money to use," said Untereiner.
On October 6th, the Edmonton Sun somewhat retracted allegations made in their story published the previous day.
The Sun was contacted by a member of the Alberta Warriors after tension was reported between Warriors and members of the Redd Alert gang residing inside the Edmonton Remand Centre.
The Warrior, who didn't want his identity revealed by the Sun, said Chalifoux was associated with the Alberta Warriors, while Falle was never a member of Redd Alert.
The earlier report of gang affiliation may have precipitated vendetta killings inside the over-crowded facility. The Warriors and Redd Alert had been on peaceful terms prior to Chalifoux's murder, and the parties met to diffuse the situation.
"We just got it cleared up," the Alberta Warrior told the Sun. "We just laughed it off."
SpiritKeeper Youth Society president Len Untereiner also told the Sun the incident was not gang related, and described both Chalifoux and Falle as "wannabes."
Shane Chalifoux grew up in Eaglesham, a small community 408 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
He moved away from the community with his family while in his early teens.
A source told the Sun Chalifoux's mother Sandy lived in Falher until recently moving to Edmonton.
"Sandy was doing very well when she was living (in Falher) until she met a certain person. I know she wasn't doing too well lately. I know she was into the drugs," the source was quoted.
An Edmonton police spokesman said the gang unit was not involved in Chalifoux's murder investigation.
Two days after Chalifoux's murder, media following up on stories about Wyser Manor were met with an odd spectacle.
CTV Edmonton's cameras caught Robin Reid, interviewed earlier by the station, walking along the same ledge where Eugene Falle held police at bay.
The situation allowed CTV's reporter to make a noteworthy comment during his broadcast.
"She's on a third-storey ledge ... and on a fixed income," David Ewasuk reported (for more, see the Ewasuk watch).
There was no explanation provided as to why the woman was on the ledge. She apparently made it safely back into the building.