Kevin Martin: Jordan Jacques-Vetten’s killing as senseless as it gets

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It will be up to judges in two separate trials to determine what, if any, roles the accused killers of homeless Calgarian Jordan Jacques-Vetten played in his death.

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But what is obviously clear as evidence has come out this week in Jacques-Vetten’s fatal shooting two years ago is that his killing was about as senseless as you can get.

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According to the Crown’s theory in the case, Jacques-Vetten was shot once in the chest during an attempted Sept. 9, 2023, robbery when he refused to give up the backpack he had slung over his shoulders.

The only evidence suggesting how long the victim and his assailants were in contact came from a doorbell camera from a home down the block from where the fatal shooting occurred on a quiet northwest Calgary residential street in the dead of night.

The video captured voices from off-camera, quickly followed by an ear-piercing gunshot.

A car could then be heard squealing its tires before a red sedan raced past the camera’s eye.

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It has not been revealed in court why Jacques-Vetten was in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood after finishing a shift as a line cook at a Stephen Avenue mall restaurant and it may never be clear.

But it’s quite possible he was just biding his time until daybreak on that late summer’s night before finding a bench or safe spot to catch some shut eye before his next work shift.

Jacques-Vetten had just started a new job at El Furniture Warehouse restaurant. A manager testified he’d only been working a week or two, meaning he likely hadn’t even received his first pay cheque.

Of course, that alone would not have immediately ended his homeless predicament, but it certainly would have been a large step in the right direction.

Instead, Jacques-Vetten had his life suddenly ended by a single bullet to his chest, which left him bleeding profusely on the front porch of an 18th Avenue N.W. home, dead before emergency medical service personnel could even arrive to attempt to save him.

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If the Crown’s theory is correct, and the victim was shot for not giving up his backpack, it makes his killing doubly tragic.

The brightly coloured backpack, still slung over his shoulders as he bled to death, contained little of value to anyone other than Jacques-Vetten himself.

Had the robbers known the contents of the sack they probably wouldn’t have bothered.

In it, police found some toiletries and an envelope from Alberta Vital Services containing Jacques-Vettan’s birth certificate along with few other seemingly insignificant items, such as a bottle of Febreeze.

At least insignificant to a robber trying to score something valuable, but to the victim, perhaps his worldly possessions.

Jacques-Vetten may have been reluctant to give up what little he had because what was in that backpack was so important to him.

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For the average person, the loss of one’s birth certificate is likely no more than a minor inconvenience. They’d simply have to go online, order another and wait until it arrived at their home.

But without a home things would have been different for Jacques-Vetten.

When all you have is nearly nothing what little you do have becomes all the more valuable to you.

Adding to the tragedy of the victim’s life and death is the fact there is no one in court to mourn his loss.

Aside from the occasional lawyer or law student and a handful of reporters, no one has attended to keep his memory alive.

It will be up to Court of King’s Bench Justice Lisa Silver to determine what, if any, level of criminal responsibility murder suspect Robert Matthews will have to bear and equally, youth court Justice Gary Cornfield will do the same for a minor co-accused.

But neither can erase the tragedy of Jacques-Vetten’s killing.

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