Mike on Crime by Mike McIntyre Page A

prior to 2005, including two earlier occasions where her file was closed. The following history was provided to jurors:
    APRIL 23, 2000: Phoenix is born to Kematch and the father, Stephen Sinclair. The couple “indicated they were not ready financially or emotionally” to care for their new baby and consented to a CFS placement. However, the couple changed their minds days later and asked for full custody. CFS obtained a three-month temporary order of guardianship and allowed the parents to have supervised visits.
    SEPTEMBER 2000: Phoenix was returned to her family and found to be in good health. Kematch split from Sinclair months later and allowed him to have full custody of Phoenix.
    MARCH 2002: CFS closed their file for the first time.
    FEBRUARY, 2003: CFS reopened the file after Phoenix was taken to hospital with Styrofoam stuck in her nose.
    JUNE 2003: Phoenix was apprehended by CFS because of concerns about her father’s drug and alcohol abuse. Kematch then told the agency she wanted to try raising her daughter again.
    AUGUST 2003: Phoenix was placed by CFS in the care of a Winnipeg couple who were friends of the father. Kematch agreed with the arrangement.
    MAY 2004: Kematch told CFS she was once again caring for her daughter. CFS checked on Phoenix and found her to be in good health.
    JULY 2004: CFS closed their file for a second time.
    DECEMBER 2004: CFS learned Kematch had given birth to a baby girl and that the father was Karl McKay. No contact was made with the couple and the file remained closed. It wouldn’t be reopened until the March 2005 tip that led them to visit Kematch but leave without seeing Phoenix.
    WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 12, 2008
    It was unimaginable cruelty. Phoenix Sinclair had been deprived of food and forced to eat her own vomit in the days before she finally succumbed to a prolonged period of abuse and neglect that included being repeatedly shot with a pellet gun and choked unconscious.
    â€œSome horrible things have happened to that little girl,” a visibly distraught Cpl. Tara Clelland-Hall told the girl’s mother, Samantha Kematch, near the end of a four-hour videotaped interview following her March 2006 arrest. “It absolutely breaks my heart the things that little girl went through in her short little life.”
    McKay’s now 18-year-old son, who helped expose the killing to police, took the witness stand and pointed the finger of blame directly at McKay and Kematch, accusing them of countless violent and degrading acts and describing how Phoenix morphed from a “chubby” and happy child into a skinny child covered in cuts and bruises who would spend nearly every minute alone in her room without any food. He wiped away tears as he told court how he tried offering a helping hand to his stepsister, who had been kept a virtual prisoner in her own home. He described trying to feed a starving Phoenix some bread and water only to be caught and threatened by Kematch. “Samantha said what the fuck are you giving my daughter food for?” he said. “I’d feel sorry for her. She would say ‘I’m hungry’.”
    He said McKay repeatedly played a “game” with Phoenix that he called “chicken” which involved picking her up by the throat, wrapping both hands around her neck and “choking her out.” “Then he’d throw her to the ground,” said the teen, noting visible finger marks would be left on her neck. “She’d make this weird scream. It was like someone had cut off her arm, like she was screaming to death.”
    McKay also liked to shoot Phoenix with a pellet gun, telling the girl to “run” and then shooting her repeatedly in the back and making her cry out in agony. “He’d shoot her for the fun of it,” Phoenix’s stepbrother said, noting the abuse would leave pellet marks all over her back. The teen said Kematch would often hit Phoenix with a metal bar and stool,