deadmonton 2006 - jaret lee severight
Jaret Lee Severight, 29, was shot to death July 1st, 2006.
Case status is open and active.
Among thousands of people heading toward Edmonton's Canada Day fireworks celebration a young man was shot dead in a highrise parking lot.
At about 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 1st 29-year-old Jaret Lee Severight was found dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest in the parking lot of a highrise seniors complex at 10305 100 Avenue.
Police examine Severight's body at the scene.
The discovery was made by a female resident of the complex inside a lot surrounded by a six-foot-high wooden fence.
No weapons were recovered.
An autopsy completed July 4th, 2006 confirmed Severight died because of blood loss due to a gunshot wound.
Police said Severight was known to them but did not provide details. The gang unit was not called in to assist.
While the official fireworks display was scheduled to begin at 11:00 p.m., several private sets of fireworks were launched prior to that time.
Some area residents said they weren’t sure if they heard fireworks or gunshots.
One neighbour was certain he heard gunfire and told the Edmonton Journal he heard more than one shot, including a spurt of rapid firing.
Severight was wearing jeans and his shirt was lying nearby. Media coverage showed bloodstains on a car near where Severight collapsed on the pavement.
Police have no suspects or witnesses in the slaying and are appealing to anyone who saw Severight behind the downtown building to contact them.
One woman interviewed by the Edmonton Sun said, “I am just frazzled. I thought I moved downtown to a highrise, a seniors complex, to be safe. But this whole place is terrible.”
The woman said her van was stolen twice from the parking lot and was vandalised three times.
The manager of the apartment building told the Sun the dead man didn’t live in the block, nor was he visiting a tenant.
Severight is Edmonton's 13th homicide of the year.
Jaret Lee Harley Severight was born in Kamsack, Saskatchewan on a First Nations reserve. He was one of nine children.
With his sister Laverne, he left the Cote reserve in 1989 for Edmonton.
Severight was featured in a December 2001 Edmonton Journal article dealing with the homeless.
Then 24, Severight said he has been homeless for five years and has had to fend for himself at night many times after being turned away from full shelters.
"The best option if you have about $5 is to go and sit in a 24-hour coffee shop all night," he told the Journal.
Severight described how landlords turn him away. "They constantly assume I'm young, I'm native, and I'm a member of a gang and I'm going to party all the time," he said.
Laverne said she didn't see much of her brother after he was released from jail in February 2006. They were supposed to meet two days before he died, but he never showed up.
Severight had two children, Freedom, 10, and Jordan, 8.
His ex-common-law wife Trinna Sowan said she saw Severight the day before he was shot walking along 118th Avenue near 95th Street.
"He looked happy, he was smiling and joking around with this friend he was with," she said in an interview with the Edmonton Sun.
Severight also seemed happy and hopeful when he came by his ex-mother-in-law's house to take his young son swimming a week before his death.
"We chatted for a while and actually he looked pretty good," Nellie Sowan told the Sun.
"He said, 'Nellie, I'm trying to straighten out my life. I'm not doing drugs, I hardly drink.' I just don't understand why somebody would shoot him," Sowan said.
Early in the media coverage of Severight's death, the Edmonton Sun inadvertently introduced a "bear" element to its online story on July 2nd, 2006.
The headline Grizzly discovery in downtown parking lot can be viewed here as it was originally presented. The intended spelling was likely grisly.