Family wants justice after lone survivor of 2023 West Broadway mass shooting dies in hospital
CBC
The lone survivor of a mass shooting in a West Broadway rooming house is being mourned by his family after he died in a Winnipeg hospital earlier this month, more than a year and a half after the shooting that left four others dead.
Shawn Marko, 56, was critically injured and had been hospitalized since the shooting on Langside Street, in the central Winnipeg area, in the early hours of Nov. 26, 2023.
"I don't even know if we'll ever get over this … how he died, and watching him suffer for so long like that," Shawn's sister, Melissa Marko, told CBC.
She said her brother had been at Health Sciences Centre right up until his death on the morning of June 1.
Shawn had been battling a recent bout of pneumonia, an illness he got for the third time while in hospital, she said.
"He had phoned me [on May 31] and he was just gasping for air," said Melissa. "It was not good, and he told me straight out, he said, 'I'm not going to make it this time.'"
He died before his family could get to the hospital to see him again.
"My only brother, [my dad's] only son," Melissa said. "How do you get over such a horrific death like that?"
Melissa said her brother suffered several serious injuries in the shooting that left him unable to walk and required 11 surgeries, including the removal of his pancreas and half of his stomach, along with portions of his spleen, bladder and bowel.
"He was shot three times," she said. "The bullets did major damage to his insides."
Jamie Randy Felix, now 34, was charged with attempted murder in Marko's shooting.
He was also charged with four counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Melelek Leseri Lesikel, 29, Dylan Maxwell Lavallee, 41, and sisters Crystal Shannon Beardy, 34, and Stephanie Amanda Beardy, 33.
Now that her brother has died, Melissa said the attempted murder charge should be upgraded.
"My brother was still in the hospital because of what happened to him," Melissa said. "We want justice and deserve justice, and so do all those other families."
WARNING: This story details allegations of child abuse.
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