Charges laid in Siksika homicide

Shannon LeClair

Times Reporter

 

On Dec. 18 at approximately 7:30 p.m. Gleichen RCMP received a 911 call about a disturbance in progress at a house on Siksika Nation.
“When they attended they found an unconscious guy laying in front of the house outside on the ground and a bunch of people milling around,” said Gleichen Staff Sgt James McLaren.
“The members immediately called EMS to come and help out with the injured fellow. They showed up and despite all their efforts he was pronounced dead on the scene.”
The teen, identified by family and friends as Chase Bigtobacco, 16, was attending a house party when the incident occurred. Austin Bigtobacco, 19, of Siksika Nation, has been charged with second-degree murder and has been remanded in custody, and is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 8.
In McLaren’s three years in Gleichen this is the fourth homicide for the detachment.
One of the recent ones was when Tak Tai Lawrence Leung was killed while visiting his girlfriend in Gleichen on May 18, 2013. Two women have been charged with first-degree murder, and have recently entered guilty pleas for manslaughter.
“Our violent crime stats are actually down within the detachment and on the nation, our serious crime assaults are down by 50 per cent and our common assaults are down by 26-27 per cent,” said McLaren.
“We have been making efforts in the past two years and we have been seeing on the domestic violence side of that, we are seeing results.”
As for the possible cause behind the decrease in the stats “I think community involvement is the big one, they know when they call the police we’ll take their complaints serious and we’ll go and investigate it, and we’ll do everything we can to bring the people to justice,” said McLaren.