Fear at a Newfoundland non-profit shelter led to a fight that resulted in the death of a woman: a judge Achi-News

ST. JOHN’S, NL – A young man who fatally stabbed a woman during a fight inside a for-profit shelter in Newfoundland and Labrador was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for manslaughter on Tuesday.

State Supreme Court Justice Vikas Khaladkar said Rayna Dove and David Quirke, who were 20 years old when Dove killed her on Dec. 27, 2021, both told their families they felt unsafe at the downtown St. Louis shelter. John’s where they lived.

That fear may have led to their quarrel, Khaladkar said.

“They were afraid of their living situation, afraid of where they found themselves, afraid of the people they lived with,” the judge told the courtroom.

Dove’s mother, Joan Dunphy, was distraught as she left court after the hearing.

“My daughter’s gone, and he’s just going to go somewhere and sit and be fed, and we’re going to pay for that, and then he’s going to go home to his mother,” he told reporters about Quirke .

Dove and Quirke started fighting over a butter knife, which Khaladkar said could be used to lock rooms in the asylum. Dove refused to return the knife, prompting Quirke to knock on the wall between their rooms. Dove then entered Quirke’s room and attacked him. He grabbed her hair and head and pulled her out into the hallway, and then went back to his room and grabbed another knife, the judge said. When Dove went back to Quirke’s room, he stabbed her three times in the abdomen.

Quirke immediately called 911, which the judge said reflected well on him. However, she did not follow the 911 operator’s instructions to find something to hold against her wound.

Had she done so it could have saved her life, Khaladkar said.

A recording of the call was played to the court during a hearing in May. Dove can be heard yelling in the background as Quirke talks to the 911 operator. At one point, he tells the operator that he believes Dove is dying.

Dove was 42 and a mother of two sons.

Khaladkar said Quirke has shown genuine remorse, noting that he cried when the 911 call was played in court. He also apologized to Dove’s family after they read their victim impact statements.

Quirke had no criminal record and suffered from various mental health issues. Khaladkar said he believed Quirke would benefit from counselling, which the judge said he would likely receive in prison.

“He is still a young man, one who will bear the stigma of a manslaughter conviction for the rest of his life,” Khaladkar said.

In her victim impact statement, Dunphy said her daughter was “living in fear” at the shelter, or boarding house, in St. Her daughter had kept careful notes in a journal about how unsafe she felt, and about all the officers she had asked to be transferred, Dunphy said in her statement.

“These journal entries show how hard she tried. But was anyone listening?” Dunphy asked. Dove, he said, “deserved so much more.”

According to a survey of the provinces in October, Newfoundland and Labrador is among the only ones to contract private landlords to provide emergency shelter to homeless people. The Ontario government could not provide a clear confirmation.

Marc Budgell, spokesperson for the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Housing, said non-profit shelters are being prioritized.

“Private and unstaffed shelters are our last resort when other options are not available, either due to capacity issues or due to individual circumstances,” he said in an emailed statement.

The department expects “in the coming weeks” a third-party report outlining the standards the private shelters will have to meet, he added.

This report was first published by The Canadian Press on June 25, 2024.