A 33-year-old North Thompson woman who shot and killed her husband at a Vavenby campsite in 2020 has been sentenced to a decade in prison.
With 467 days of time served factored in at 1.5 days per day behind bars, Ashleigh Tschritter has eight years remaining on her sentence.
“She took her husband’s life because he said something she didn’t like,” Justice Joel Groves said during sentencing on March 13 as he referenced Tschritter’s record of violent crimes that preceded the Sept. 6, 2020, death of her husband, David Simpson.
“She must be deterred from committing offences in the future … this calls for a significant sentence to be imposed. Because of her actions and her inability to exercise any modicum of self control, she needs to be separated from society,” Groves said. “Separation from society is required to protect society, but also, if possible, to try to instil a sense of responsibility in Ms. Tschritter and acknowledgement of the harm that she has done to her community, the harm that she has done to her now deceased husband and her husband’s family and to her own children.”
Tschritter was originally charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of her 39-year-old husband, but a jury in December found her guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
During the trial, court heard Tschritter, her husband and their children were camping with a friend when she became angry after her husband mentioned another woman. She retrieved a shotgun from their camper and killed her husband, though claimed to police that he had killed himself.
Groves noted a previous judge described Tschritter’s ongoing behavioural problems and the need for anger management eight years before Simpson was shot to death. Tschritter has a history of violent criminal offences, with past convictions for robbery and assault, including the brutal robbery and beating of a university student in Chilliwack in March if 2010 that left the victim close to death.
“Though eight years had elapsed from that time of sentencing, in regards to her anger management and aggressiveness, nothing seems to have changed,” Groves said. “She used a firearm to end the life of Mr. Simpson while under the (firearms) prohibition … she killed her domestic partner. She involved her children afterwards and the effect on them is no doubt long term and devastating. What is particularly troubling in this entire circumstance is the lack of explanation for her actions. At most, she was insulted, it appears, by Mr. Simpson’s reference to another female person — perhaps it was a girlfriend.”
In addition to her prison sentence, Tschritter must provide a DNA sample for the national crime database and has been handed a lifetime firearms prohibition.
- By Breanne Massey of Kamloops This Week
READ MORE: Woman who shot husband to death at Vavenby campsite to be sentenced
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