Fiery killing means seven more years in jail

A man who set his mother and her dog on fire, killing them both, will serve almost seven more years in jail on top of 18 months in solitary confinement he has already served, a judge ruled Friday.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan said Parker Matthias, 51, may not have intended to cause his mother’s death when he doused her with gasoline and held a lighter close to her, but he should have known what he doing was extremely dangerous.

McEwan convicted Matthias of manslaughter after a trial without a jury last year.

Prosecutor Don Mann suggested a range of five to seven years in jail for the crime less the time he's already served, saying the man’s actions were more than an accident but less than “near murder.”

But Justice McEwan disagreed, saying the case was closer to murder than not, imposing a lengthier sentence than sought by the Crown.

“This was a terrible crime,” said the judge. “I consider this to be a serious case that requires a serious sentence.”

Defence lawyer Don Campbell had asked the court to consider the nature of the custody Matthias has already served and impose two years in jail, to be followed by three years of probation.

Matthias has spent all the time in jail since his arrest in August 2008 in 23-hour lockup, as he was labelled a “protective custody” inmate.

He has been badly assaulted at least once, the court was told. The most serious incident happened when the man was being transferred to a prison in Victoria, where he was to meet with a psychiatrist.

Prison guards put him in a Lower Mainland cell with another inmate who mercilessly beat him for more than an hour, Campbell said. Matthias suffered a broken jaw and broken fingers and serious head-to-toe bruising.

“He is terrified of being in with other inmates. That’s not paranoid, that’s reasonable. He’s been waiting for the guards to leave the doors open — again,” Campbell said.

As a result of that, Matthias should be credited for more than the usual two-for-one credit for his time spent in jail before being sentenced.

McEwan gave Matthias only two-for-one credit for his “dead time.”

Matthias was charged with the second-degree murder of his mother, Kathleen Jennings, 79. She died five days after she was set ablaze by Matthias in the family’s Clearwater trailer Aug. 1, 2008.

Matthias testified he never meant to start a fire, but only wanted to scare his mother, who had been taunting him with insults as they argued.

The 52-year-old man said he first tried to set a fire on the kitchen floor, then burned his mother’s purse. When that did not make her stop her mean-spirited taunting, he poured gas on her dog’s head, he testified.

She picked up the dog and sat on a chair, but didn’t stop calling him names. He poured more gas on the dog as it sat on her lap, then held a lit barbecue lighter close to the dog’s head.

Despite that, he never thought a fire would start, the man testified. The vapours must have caught, he suggested, and the woman and dog were almost instantly engulfed in flame.

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