Following a guilty plea to manslaughter over a 2021 shooting in Mayo, Daniel Cashaback-Myra, 22, was sentenced on June 20.
This April, he pleaded guilty to killing 38-year-old Peter Young using a non-restricted nine-millimetre carbine on Jan. 10, 2021. Sentencing, held in Mayo on June 20, saw him saddled with five years in custody for the killing. Court documents state Cashaback-Myra will be credited for 487 days of time served prior to trial.
Along with the sentence for shooting Young, Cashaback-Myra was sentenced to two additional nine-month sentences for drug charges to be served concurrently. One deals with possession of crack cocaine for trafficking in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 2017, and the other with trafficking both crack and oxycodone in Whitehorse in early 2020.
He will also be subject to a lifetime firearms prohibition and will have to forfeit property related to his offences.
According to an agreed statement of facts filed with the court, on the night he shot Young, Cashaback-Myra was under release conditions ordering that he not possess any firearms. This stemmed from the drug charges against him.
The agreed statement of facts sketches out what happened leading up to the shooting in the early morning hours of Jan. 10, 2021. It states that Cashaback-Myra was living with his girlfriend in Mayo at the time. Young lived nearby with a woman, and the court heard they would occasionally purchase crack cocaine from Cashaback-Myra’s girlfriend, who would pass the drugs to them out her bedroom window.
Two such transactions on Jan. 9, 2021 are described in the agreed facts. A third was initiated by an e-transfer from the woman living with Young to Cashaback-Myra’s girlfriend in the early morning hours of Jan. 10. The facts state that at about 5 a.m., the woman went over to the house Cashaback-Myra was staying at in an attempt to get the drugs she had paid for or her money back. Apparently unaware of the e-transfer and agitated at being disturbed at such an early hour, Cashaback-Myra berated and pushed the woman.
The court heard that Young again tried to contact Cashaback-Myra’s girlfriend by text message before going to the house. The facts state that he was upset, intoxicated and significantly larger and taller than Cashaback-Myra. It states that Young was angrily banging on and kicking the door of the house when he arrived.
Cashaback-Myra armed himself with a Kel Tec nine-millimetre carbine before going outside. There was a verbal confrontation, and Young began to approach Cashaback-Myra, who the court heard then fired a warning shot. The facts state that Young rushed forward, and Cashaback-Myra fired several times. Young was struck by five bullets. In response to the shots, the woman he was living with arrived in a car. Young was barely able to get into the car. He died after a brief medical intervention at the Mayo Nursing Centre.
Meanwhile, Cashaback-Myra fled the scene, taking the gun with him. He surrendered himself and the gun at the Mayo RCMP detachment hours later.
Along with being bound by release conditions preventing him from owning a firearm, Cashaback-Myra has never been licensed to acquire or possess firearms or ammunition.
The shooting had been characterized by Cashaback-Myra’s lawyer Vincent Larochelle as “imperfect self-defence in response to a perceived threat” in an earlier court session. The agreed statement of facts continues with this as Cashaback-Myra asserted and the crown conceded that he was acting in the heat of the moment based on the apparently aggressive behaviour of Young. The shooter’s belief that Young was threatening to use force was conceded as reasonable. Still, in the agreed facts Cashaback-Myra admits that the circumstances, including the use of an illegally possessed firearm, amount to disproportionate and excessive force given the circumstances.
Contact Jim Elliot at jim.elliot@yukon-news.com