Ont. man pleads guilty to manslaughter in fatal shooting of young mother
Alex Jolly, 25, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Friday in the 2022 shooting death of a young mother from Newmarket.
Officers said they found 22-year-old Nicole Mercer suffering a gunshot wound to her abdomen at a home on Prospect Street in downtown Newmarket on July 29 two years ago.
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The Crown read an Agreed Statement of Facts surrounding the events of the fatal shooting, revealing Jolly and a group of friends were in his room when Mercer, his girlfriend at the time, left because of the noise.
The statement continued that when Mercer returned to the home, she knocked on the door, and Jolly pointed a gun and fired.
Mercer was pronounced dead at the hospital. Her son was five at the time of her death.
Following the shooting, Jolly went on the run, with police issuing a warrant for his arrest.
On Sept. 9, he was taken into custody at Yorkdale Mall in Toronto and initially charged with second-degree murder, along with several firearm offences.
Mercer's family was distraught at Friday's court proceedings after his guilty plea, upset he wasn't convicted of murder.
"You took her life from us, and you're getting away with it," Mercer's mother, Shannon Payne, said during victim impact statements. "I hope she haunts you for the rest of your life."
"Every single day feels like Nicole died just yesterday," her sister, Michaela, told the courtroom, and then addressed Jolly, saying, "She will never get the chance to see the world grow with her in it. She will never get that chance because you killed her."
"May you never forget the night you killed my daughter," Payne said.
Jolly's co-accused, Maitland Doran, 20, received a conditional sentence of two years less a day under house arrest late last year for accessory after the fact to murder. The court heard Doran helped Jolly leave town after the shooting.
A sentencing hearing for Jolly is scheduled for early November.
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