Man gets 5-year manslaughter sentence for 2021 fatal shooting in Mayo, Yukon

The man responsible for the 2021 fatal shooting of Peter Young in Mayo, Yukon, will spend another year and four months behind bars. 

Daniel Cashaback-Myra, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier this year for killing the 38-year-old father of two during a confrontation over drug money, was sentenced in the community Tuesday. 

Yukon Supreme Court Chief Justice Suzanne Duncan accepted a joint submission from the Crown and defence seeking a five-year sentence, a year more than the mandatory minimum sentence for manslaughter using a firearm. She also approved 90-day sentences, to be served concurrently, for two unrelated drug possession charges Cashaback-Myra racked up in Saskatoon and Whitehorse. 

With credit for the time he's already spent in jail, though, Cashaback-Myra, 25, only has about 16 more months left to serve. 

According to admissions of fact filed to the court, Cashaback-Myra, in January 2021, was living in Mayo with his girlfriend from whom Young and his wife occasionally bought crack cocaine.

Young's wife purchased crack twice the night of Jan. 9 and, in the early hours of Jan. 10, sent another e-transfer for more. 

When the girlfriend didn't reply, Young's wife went over to her duplex to demand the drugs or her money back. Cashaback-Myra, who didn't know about the transaction, answered the door and told her to leave, pushing her away in the process. 

Young's wife returned home and told him what had happened. Young then went over to the duplex and was "yelling angrily, banging and kicking on the door and otherwise trying" to break in. Cashaback-Myra answered the door armed with a loaded semi-automatic carbine and after a brief verbal confrontation, fired a warning shot before shooting Young five times. 

Young's wife brought him to the Mayo health centre, where he died. Cashaback-Myra turned himself in to RCMP several hours later and was charged with second-degree murder. 

In emotional victim and community impact statements read to the court Tuesday, Young's family and friends remembered him as a devoted father, hard worker and protector, someone who could always be relied on to help out without being asked and who held his family together. 

"Even if I live a million years, I will miss him," his mother said, describing Young as a loveable teddy bear who gave bear hugs. 

"I'll never forgive you for this senseless act," one of Young's sisters told Cashaback-Myra, adding that even if he did nothing but good deeds for the next hundred years, "you will never be half the man my brother was." 

Reading a community impact statement, First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Chief Dawna Hope said Mayo was a tight-knit community and Young's homicide affected people at all levels. 

"A lot of grief flooded the community," Hope read.