Edmonton man sentenced to 12½ years for killing infant son

An Edmonton man has been sentenced to 12½ years in prison for what a judge described as the "brutal killing" of his infant son.

Christopher Lamarche, who was found guilty of manslaughter earlier this month in the May 2017 death of six-month-old Jarock Humeniuk, will have four years deducted from his sentence for time already served.

"This trial involved the brutal killing of an infant," Court of Queen's Bench Justice Sterling Sanderman said Thursday.

"He was a lovely young boy. There's not a greater position of trust than a father caring for their child."

Jarock died May 28, 2017, of blunt force trauma.

The infant had been placed in Lamarche's care for the weekend. Lamarche, then 23, was living at his parents' home in north Edmonton.

On the second night of the visit, Jarock wouldn't stop crying, Lamarche confessed to "Mr. Big" two years later, during an undercover Edmonton police operation. Lamarche said he snapped.

"He strangled his six-month-old son with a sheet so it wouldn't leave marks," Crown prosecutor Bonnie Parker said Thursday in her sentencing submission.

"He bent a six-month-old baby in a way that it should never be bent. He violently shook the baby."

An autopsy revealed the baby had suffered a broken collarbone, three fractured ribs, bruising and brain damage.

Parker asked the judge to impose a 16-year sentence.

"Sixteen [years] is completely beyond the pale," said defence lawyer Evan MacIntyre.

"He made a horrific, life-altering mistake that night … Nothing we do here today will make up for Jarock Humeniuk's death."

MacIntyre suggested a sentence in the range of eight to 10 years.

"He is remorseful for his conduct," Lamarche's lawyer added. "He told me candidly that Jarock was the only thing that mattered to him."

'How wrong we were about you'

In a victim impact statement read in court by the Crown prosecutor, Lamarche's mother expressed how she felt betrayed by her son.

"We lost both our only grandson and our only son," Francine Lamarche wrote.

"You made Dad and I feel like the biggest fools in the world. The Christopher we thought we knew would not have been capable of doing such a horrible act … It's devastated us to find out how wrong we were about you."

She complained about suffering shame and embarrassment and said she and her husband spent $10,000 on a lawyer "just to find out you were guilty."

"You can't imagine how deeply you hurt us," she wrote.

"Who knows, maybe you don't even care."

'He deserved to live his life'

In her own victim impact statement, Jarock's mother said she has struggled emotionally and mentally since her baby's death.

Christie Humeniuk said she's been diagnosed with PTSD, borderline personality disorder, depression and anxiety. She said she's tried "a few times" to commit suicide and has stayed in mental health institutions a couple of times.

"My life has felt incomplete since May 28th, 2017, and I have yet to find a way to cope," she wrote.

Christie Humeniuk's mother Carol said most of her time since Jarock's death has been spent trying to help her grieving daughter.

"Christie sometimes blames me for the death of Jarock, as I was the one who made the call that Friday for Jarock to go for a visit," she wrote in her victim impact statement.

Jarock would have turned five earlier this month.

"He never even got the chance to talk, to walk or to even run in the yard like children should," his maternal grandmother wrote.

"His entire life was taken away from him without reason.

"He deserved to live his life."