A long-term offender has now been charged in Regina’s second homicide of 2017.

Christopher Sean Pascal, 25, has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Rodney James Nippi, 46.

Police were called to a home on the 1400 block of 12th Avenue just before 8:00 p.m. on May 14. When they arrived on scene, they learned that an assailant had entered the home and assaulted the resident with a weapon before fleeing the scene.

The victim, Nippi, was unresponsive when emergency crews arrived. He succumbed to his injuries before he could be taken to hospital.

On May 15, police issued a Canada-wide warrant for Pascal, saying he had breached his long term supervision order. It was not until May 19 that it was revealed that police believed he was connected to Nippi’s death.

In 2013 Pascal was declared a long-term offender after he was convicted of a violent sexual assault in Regina. He was sentenced to 27 months in a federal penitentiary, and imposed a seven-year long-term supervision order.

Pascal was facing a possible dangerous offender designation after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 28-year old woman in Regina in July 2010.

Court heard Pascal, then 18, punched the woman in the head repeatedly, then grabbed her by the hair and smashed the back of her head into the metal covering of a window.

He then dragged the woman into a back alley, where he forced her to remove some of her clothes and sexually assaulted her.

Pascal’s criminal history includes several other convictions for violent offences, including an aggravated assault on his then-15-year-old girlfriend in 2008, in which he kicked and stabbed her several times.

Pascal is expected to make his first court appearance in connection to Nippi’s death on Friday.

 

With files from Ken Gousseau