A white man who shot and killed two local hunters on a country road in the Canadian province of Alberta has been found guilty of murder and manslaughter in a case that exposed racial tensions in the region. The man’s father was also found guilty of two counts of manslaughter.
Anthony Bilodo, 33, and his father, Roger Bilodo, 58, were charged with the deaths of Maurice Cardinal, 57, and his nephew Jacob Sansum, 39, in the evening of March 2020. After less than a day of deliberation, the Edmonton jury found them both guilty late Tuesday.
The bodies of the two hunters, who were celebrating with friends after a successful moose hunt, were found early on March 28 on a country road 160 miles northeast of Edmonton, a horrific crime that shocked the region.
Sansum had recently lost his job as a mechanic and worked as a volunteer firefighter. Cardinal was an avid hunter and outdoor enthusiast. Both were mestizos – a separate group that tracks the lineage of both indigenous nations and European settlers – and were allowed to hunt in the off-season.
“These gentlemen, Maurice and Jake, were so important to our mestizo community,” Andrea Sandmeyer, a spokeswoman for the mestizo nation of Alberta, told reporters after the sentencing. “It’s a huge loss for this family, a huge loss for the Metis nation of Alberta.
Crown prosecutors say Anthony Bilodo and Roger Bilodo believe Sansum and the cardinal are thieves and have taken the law into their own hands with “tragic results.”
“Two innocent men, Jake and Maurice, had absolutely no business dying that night, these two boys did nothing wrong,” prosecutor Jeff Rudiac told the jury during his closing remarks.
The conviction in a case involving indigenous victims and the owner of a white weapon contrasted with another high-ranking case in the region. During the trial against him in 2016, Gerald Stanley admitted to shooting Colten Bush, but was acquitted of murder charges. Bushi’s mother, Debbie Batiste, was in court on Tuesday in support of Sansum’s family and a cardinal.
According to the chronology of events presented in court, Roger Bilodo followed Sansum and the cardinal, believing that their truck had been spotted at his property the day before.
Bilodo, accompanied in his truck by his teenage son, chases Sansum and the Cardinal on the country roads at high speed. During the chase, Bilodo called his son Anthony and told him to bring a weapon.
Shortly after arriving at the scene where the vehicles belonging to Roger Bilodo and Sansum were stopped, Anthony Bilodo shot and killed the two hunters.
A video of the fatal meeting between the men, taken from a nearby gas station, shows that Bilodo shot Sansum once in the chest. He shot the Cardinal three times in the shoulder.
The defense denied that the race played a role in the murder and instead described the meeting as self-defense, claiming that Anthony Bilodo arrived on the scene and saw his father fighting with one of the men and his younger brother in a truck shouting for help.
According to court witnesses, Sansom smashed the window of the passenger of Roger Bilodo’s truck and then allegedly attacked Roger and his teenage son.
When he arrived, Anthony Bilodo told the court he had shot Sansom because the man was running after him and heard Sansom call for a cardinal to take a firearm so they could “kill” him.
Anthony Bilodo testified that he then shot Cardinal after seeing the man with a large pistol with a cartridge attached and said that Cardinal would kill him in retaliation for the Sansom shootings.
The prosecution said Bilodo was the first to produce a weapon and bring a weapon to a scene he did not know would be violent, suggesting he planned to escalate and use deadly force.
Bilodo also admitted in court that neither he nor his father reported the death to police. He also changed his truck to avoid suspicion.
The defense says it is “very disappointed” with the outcome and will appeal the conviction. The lawyers will meet again on June 17 to discuss the verdict.
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