Vernon killer has parole revoked, but still not behind bars

A Vernon pharmacist who killed his partner has been ordered to go back to living in a halfway house after he was caught drinking.

According to an Oct. 6 Parole Board of Canada decision, Shaun Ross Wiebe was given permission to live in his own condo last June, but has been “less than transparent” about his movements and is “unmanageable.”

“You continue to act impulsively, disregard the rules, lack consequential thinking, and appear to not comprehend your risk,” the Parole Board decision says. “You have a history of engaging in relationships with vulnerable women and continue to consume alcohol and not manage your emotions.”

The Parole Board continues to say Wiebe remains a “high-risk” for intimate partner violence.

The decision says after originally being released on parole, Wiebe was under numerous conditions but breached them by drinking alcohol and not disclosing relationships with women. 

The Parole Board previously described him as “entitled, arrogant, and argumentative.”

The Board found Wiebe bought and drank alcohol with his girlfriend, but kept the information from them, and his girlfriends had covered for him. The Board says he can no longer be managed in the community and has to live in a residential facility.

“You have a history of engaging in relationships with vulnerable women and continue to consume alcohol and not manage your emotions, which were factors that led to your offending,” the decision reads.

The former pharmacist, who’s in his late 40s, was originally granted parole roughly one year after being sentenced to four years in jail for killing his girlfriend, Heather Barker, at his home in an upmarket neighbourhood of Vernon.

Wiebe confessed that he’d repeatedly banged Barker’s head against the floor during an argument in early 2018. She died in hospital the following day.

The pharmacist fled Vernon, and wasn’t arrested until three years later, after he admitted to the killing to an undercover police officer.

The Parole decision highlighted the devastating impact Barker’s death had on her friends and family.

“This is not a story about two people caught in addiction, but a story of a woman who poured her heart into loving someone she believed she could fix. Instead of healing him, he isolated her from those who cherished her – from her daughters, her parents and friends, and shattered her,” a victim impact statement reads.

Wiebe has a history of domestic abuse and was violent in previous relationships, having been charged numerous times, and had a restraining order put on him.

After killing Barker, but before he was charged in her death, Wiebe married his third wife. Months later, he was charged with assaulting her. 

“(The) offences appear to be characterized by an attitude that supports spousal violence, your inability to link your actions to consequences resulting in poor problem-solving skills, and your abuse of alcohol,” the Parole Board decision says. 

In revoking Wiebe’s statutory release, the Parole Board said it’s concerned about his actions.

“Namely, quickly ingratiating yourself with a female, quickly turning this into a relationship and suggesting that you can reside with this female upon your release despite your ongoing inability to maintain your sobriety and therefore putting another female at risk of your tendency for domestic violence and attacks due to stress and abuse of alcohol, both of which were precipitating factors in the index offence,” the decision reads. “You have only put your needs ahead of anything else and continue to minimize your ability to maintain your own sobriety. Your abuse of alcohol and inability to manage your emotions are direct contributing factors in your Manslaughter conviction.”