The motorist who drove a stolen van recklessly through Calgary before running a red light and killing a young girl has lived a life of immense trauma, the author of a report into his indigenous background told court Friday.
Kate Webb-Harris, who prepared the report on Duane Nepoose, said that trauma has significantly impacted his brain development.
“His brain has been compromised,” Webb-Harris told defence lawyer Sam Taylor, as part of sentencing submissions in Nepoose’s case.
Nepoose, 31, pleaded guilty to multiple charges a years ago in connection with a Boxing Day 2024 crime spree that ended in him running a red light at Macleod Trail and Southland Drive, colliding with two other vehicles and killing nine-year-old Victoria Desjardins.
Webb-Harris, her voice often cracking with emotion, said she uses a 10-point scale to determine brain trauma, explaining a four out of 10 shows a person’s brain “has developed in a different way.”
“He’s a 10 out of 10,” she said of the offender.
“They’re in survival mode,” Webb-Harris said of those experiencing the type of childhood trauma Nepoose went through.
“I call it caveman brain.”
Webb-Harris told Taylor her report was mostly based on hours of interviews with Nepoose as well as speaking to his sister.
A frame grab from Calgary Police body camera released as a court exhibit shows the arrest of Duane Arlen John Nepoose at the scene of a fatal crash on December 26, 2024.
From that she learned he grew up in an environment that included physical and sexual abuse and neglect and intergenerational trauma that included both their parents surviving residential schooling.
“He was always being sexually assaulted and beaten,” Webb-Harris said.
“He doesn’t recall living with his father,” she told Taylor.
“He was told his father committed suicide when he was only a few months old.”
At an earlier court appearance Crown prosecutor Todd Buziak detailed Nepoose’s crime spree that ended in the fatal crash, which also badly injured the dead girl’s mother and older sister, as well as another motorist.
Buziak said the HAWCS police helicopter tracked Nepoose as he sped along multiple roadways in the southern part of Calgary, at one point accelerating to approximately 170 km/h.
Video from HAWCS, played in court, captured Nepoose eventually heading northbound on Macleod Trail, running red lights at 109th Avenue and 99th Avenue, before striking the silver Pontiac Vibe being driven by Victoria’s mother, Amanda Reitmeier.
In sentencing submissions in April, Buziak suggested a prison term in the 9½- to 10½-year range would be appropriate in the circumstances in the case.
Taylor suggested a sentence in the five-year, nine-month to seven-year, three-month range would be a fit punishment.
After submissions, Nepoose addressed court.
“I want to say that I’m sorry to the family, sorry for taking away moments that should have been,” he said.
Justice Indra Maharaj will hand down his sentence at a later date.
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