The mother of a 20-year-old former Prince George man who was murdered on a logging road off the Coquihalla Highway says the third and final conviction of the men responsible for her son's death will help bring her some closure.
The body of Michael Bonin was found on the Peers Creek forest service road on April 20, 2017, the day after he was shot multiple times by his childhood friend, Joshua Fleurant.
On Wednesday, more than five years after his murder, 30-year-old Ryan Watt struck a plea deal with the Crown and pleaded guilty to manslaughter, instead of the first-degree murder charge he was set to go to trial on next month. He was handed a 15-year sentence, but with credit for time served, he's left with a little more than eight years.
Fleurant and Watt have also had ties to Prince George.
Michael's mother Annette got word from the Crown about the plea deal on Monday, and she and her husband drove the 12 hours from their home in rural Alberta Tuesday night to see the conviction and sentencing of the third and final person involved in her son's death.
“This is very important to me,” Annette said. “It provides a conclusion for me. I can now go on and think about the good things and the good times that me and Michael have had. And I don't have to think about how he was murdered, how he was shot, or what happened to cause his death. He's dead and gone, but he's always going to be in my heart."
Watt's co-accused, Fleurant and Jared Jorgenson, both pleaded guilty last summer to second-degree murder and manslaughter respectively. But the cases have been covered under a sweeping publication ban until the conclusion of Watt's matter.
“Now that this trial is all done and the truth can come out and people can know what happened to my son, I think that it will help me move on,” Annette said.
Watt was handed a 15-year sentence for his manslaughter conviction, but Annette says the plea deal the Crown accepted is “disgusting.”
“Manslaughter just doesn't match what happened to my son,” Annette said. “This was a contracted killing – you have to hire somebody, you have to buy a weapon, you have to pay this person – that has nothing to do with manslaughter, that's murder in the first degree.”
Bonin had been friends with Fleurant since elementary school. The pair had driven together to the Peers Creek forest service road, before Fleurant shot Bonin multiple times with a .357-calibre handgun. Watt gave Fleurant $5,000 for carrying out the killing.
Annette says she's known Fleurant since he was a child.
“His friends were like my kids as well,” she said. “It's hard to accept that one of his childhood friends killed him for money.
“These gangsters, these gangs, they focus on young people and easy fast money. They know how to manipulate them and they get them hooked on drugs and they scare them into doing things they don't want to do.”
Annette now plans to spread some of her son's ashes at a lake where she used to take her son and his friends camping on his birthdays. Michael had told her before he died that if he died before her, that's where he wanted his remains spread.
“But I won't give up all of him, I'll keep a little bit,” Annette said.
