In Calgary courts: Court of Appeal upholds murderer’s lengthy parole ineligibility​on March 5, 2025 at 9:00 pm

Jurors began deliberations late Tuesday afternoon in the case of B.C. resident John Sproule in the fatal stabbing of a man outside a Banff bar.

Calgary Court of King’s Bench Justice Johanna Price finished giving jurors final instructions on the law for them to consider whether Sproule was guilty of murder, a reduced charge of manslaughter, or he acted in self-defence shortly after 4 p.m.

Sproule is charged with second-degree murder in the Sept. 3, 2022, fatal stabbing of Ryden Brogden outside the Dancing Sasquatch bar on Banff Avenue in the national park town.

During his trial, which began Feb. 3, court heard Sproule stabbed Brogden 12 times, while causing an additional seven incised wounds to the body of the Priddis resident.

Both men had arrived in Banff just hours earlier, with Sproule on a vacation with his Lake Country, B.C., family, including his brother Josh, and Brogden passing through on the way to B.C. for a fishing trip with his friend, Howard Pearse.

The four men got into an altercation on the sidewalk outside the bar after John Sproule approached Brogden asking for a cigarette.

But the accused and Pearse gave differing versions of what started the altercation, with Pearse testifying Sproule had demanded Brogden hand him over the cigarette, his last one, he was smoking.

When Brogden declined Sproule threatened to shank him.

The accused testified Brogden was the aggressor and when he started getting badly beaten he pulled out a knife he was carrying for work purposes and swung in a panic.

Defence counsel Cory Wilson argued jurors should find his client was acting in self-defence and should be acquitted, while Crown prosecutor Kaitlyn Perrin suggested Sproule intentionally inflicted grave harm on the victim and was guilty of murder.

Price said without a murderous intent, or an act of self-defence Sproule was guilty of manslaughter.

When Kyle Rider’s youngest daughter told him one of his dogs had a weird bone he didn’t think much of it.

But when the little girl interrupted his slumber the morning of May 15, 2022, a second time, he sent her older sister to investigate, Rider told a Calgary jury on Tuesday.

“I told my oldest to go check and she came screaming in saying ‘dad it’s a weird bone, it looks like a human foot,’” Rider testified.

“I went outside right after that. It was a foot,” the witness said.

Rider, 36, was testifying at the manslaughter trial of Calgarian Jason Tait, who is accused of taking part in the April 7, 2022, killing of Keanan Crane.

He also faces a charge of being an accessory after the fact to Crane’s murder.

In her opening address to jurors on Monday, Crown prosecutor Stephanie Morton said evidence will be called to show Tait owed money to a drug dealer after police unknowingly seized narcotics that had been fronted to him.

Morton said Crane was killed and dismembered to “send a message” about the unpaid drug debt.