Chase Freed, who is 20 years old, pleaded guilty Monday to the second-degree murder of Jim Williams in Red Deer in December 2019. The RCMP then said that a masked man armed with a semi-automatic rifle shot Williams, 69, in front of his wife in the store parking lot during a robbery attempt. Williams died at the hospital. Judge Eric Macklin agreed with a joint submission by the Crown and the defense that in addition to automatic life imprisonment, Freed should not be entitled to parole for at least a decade. The court heard six statements of impact from the victims, including Williams’s wife, his children and a woman who saw the shooting in the mall parking lot.
