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Noteworthy legal cases in Calgary and area from April 7-11, 2025
Noteworthy legal cases in Calgary and area from April 7-11, 2025
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Okotoks widower Glenn Burke had hoped to see the driver responsible for the deaths of his wife and adult son spend some time behind bars for her crime.
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At the very least, Burke said Monday, he wanted to hear an apology from the woman whose dangerous driving took the lives of his loved ones.
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In Calgary Court of King’s Bench, Burke got neither.
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Justice Nancy Dilts accepted a joint submission from defence counsel Pat Fagan and Crown prosecutor Indayat Balogun to hand Charizma Hunter Homer a two-year-less-a-day conditional sentence over the April 27, 2022, deaths of Kathy and Christopher Burke.
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“I’m totally disappointed, of course,” Glenn Burke said, shortly after Dilts ordered Homer, 26, to spend a year under house arrest and 12 more months on a nightly curfew.
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“She just does not care. She killed two people and she doesn’t care.”
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Burke said while he knew the prosecution wouldn’t be seeking jail for Homer, he still had hoped for a different outcome.
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“It’s sad. Everybody I talked to said the same thing, our legal system, it doesn’t do anything to address the criminal. They get off so easy.”
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Homer had faced four charges, two each of impaired driving causing death and two of dangerous driving causing the deaths of the two victims.
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But Fagan told Dilts that Balogun and co-prosecutor Patrick Bigg had already conceded there wasn’t evidence to support the contention Homer was impaired by drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash, on Highway 7, just southwest of Okotoks.
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According to a statement of agreed facts, Homer was westbound on the two-lane highway when at high speed she attempted to pass a car in her lane.
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Christopher Burke, who was heading eastbound in a Honda Civic, could not avoid the head-on collision with Homer’s oncoming Cadillac Escalade.
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An RCMP accident expert collected crash data from both vehicles, Balogun said.
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“Prior to the collision (the Escalade) had been travelling upwards of 148 km/h, whereas (the Civic) was travelling 99 km/h,” the prosecutor told Dilts.
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The posted speed limit on the roadway is 100 km/h.
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“Multiple witnesses at the scene described the accused’s driving pattern as reckless and that when the pass was initiated, there was no way that she would have been able to complete the pass safely.”
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Dilts also heard victim impact statements from Glenn Burke, his surviving son, Matthew, and the dead woman’s sister, Lola Pascale.
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Pascale said the tragedy seems “like some cruel joke that we’re all going to wake up from.”
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Fagan told Dilts his client has also suffered psychologically from the crash with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
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Along with the conditional sentence Homer, who now lives in Fox Creek, northwest of Edmonton, is prohibited from driving for three years.
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