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'The noise is gone': Family of murdered teen describes 379 days of grief at sentencing hearing
It's been 379 days since Ruth Visser held onto her 16-year-old son's bare foot at the end of his hospital bed as doctors and nurses worked frantically to save him after he was stabbed by a boy he'd never met.
"That was the last time I touched my son," she wrote in a victim impact statement. "I held his foot as if to say, 'You're going too fast, wait for me.'
"And then, time stopped."
Dean Visser died from his injuries on June 6, 2024.
A 17-year-old who can't be identified because he was a youth at the time of the stabbing pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last month. CBC News is identifying him as SK.
On Friday, prosecutor Darren Maloney and defence lawyer Rebecca Snukal asked Court of King's Bench Justice Lisa Silver to impose the maximum sentence for a youth convicted of second-degree murder: four years in jail followed by three years under community supervision. The sentence will be handed down later this year.
"Seven years for a life? Seven years for Dean?" Ruth questioned in her victim impact statement.
"How do lawyers and judges balance a mother's broken heart against a number?"
Details of the killing were outlined in an agreed statement of facts as part of SK's plea in May.
Justice Lisa Silver heard that in 2024, Dean and SK "harboured animosity" toward each other because of a heated exchange of messages on Instagram.
On June 24, Dean was walking with his girlfriend in southeast Calgary when he was spotted by SK, who began to follow the couple.
At the time, the victim was carrying a hooded sweatshirt from the brand Bathing Ape, known as a BAPE. Dean's father said he was headed to a friend's house to return the hoodie.
With his hood pulled up, SK ran up behind the couple and stabbed Dean. He shouted, "Give me that BAPE."
Dean handed the sweatshirt over and SK ran away.
When police arrested SK, he told them that when he spotted Dean on the street, he ran up and stabbed him out of "rage" because of their online feud.
Dean's mother says she still sets a place for him at the dinner table. The void, she says, has left a silence in the home.
"No more of his laugh, a laugh that split rooms open with light and settled in the floorboards like it belonged there," wrote Ruth.
"Now that silence settles in its place. It lingers after dinner, it follows me into his room where nothing dares move."
It's the little things, the idiosyncrasies of teenage boyhood, that hit the grieving mother the hardest, she wrote.
"No more mid-day texts about a Timmy's order … no more late night pings asking for a ride home, no more wheelies on his dirt bike, no more doughnuts in the dust while we camped, the air full of grit and joy.
"The noise is gone. Dean's chaos is gone. But the ache... the ache is ever present."
Family dynamics, wrote Ruth, are forever changed as well, including her marriage.
"Grief pushes and pulls us, shaping us differently. Some days we hold each other. Some days we can't even talk."
Dean's father and sister both wrote victim impact statements
Elizabeth Visser was 19 years old when her little brother was killed.
"The house smells better and I hate it," she said. "It no longer smells like teen boys or locker rooms. What a dumb thing to miss."
Elizabeth was about to turn 20 when Dean was killed. He'd bought her a gift that he never got to give her.
It was a 1,500-piece puzzle. A homage to the hours spent "sitting at the coffee table in uncomfortable positions, doing jigsaw puzzles together."
In his statement, Kevin Visser told the judge that his son was the type of person who "looked out for people."
"He came home one day and made a meal for a homeless person he met on his travels around the neighbourhood," wrote Kevin.
The relationship between Dean and Kevin was developing beyond father/son, into a friendship.
"I lost more than a son, I lost a close friend."
