Killer sentenced again

A Kelowna killer has another 75 days left to serve after breaching the probation conditions on his manslaughter conviction yet again.

Steven Pirko served about six-and-a-half years in jail for killing Chris Ausman with a hammer in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, 2014. While a jury initially convicted him of second-degree murder, the BC Court of Appeal overturned the ruling and he instead pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

But since his release in May of 2023, on a three-year probation order, Pirko has continued to reoffend.

He was most recently arrested in late September and charged with possession of stolen property, obstructing a police officer, breaching probation and possessing someone else's ID. While the details around the offences are not clear, the incident occurred in Kelowna.

Pirko was scheduled in Kelowna court Wednesday for a bail hearing, but he instead pleaded guilty to three of the four charges he faced. The Crown stayed the ID charge in return.

Pirko was handed a total sentence of 4.5 months of jail for the three convictions, but with two months of enhanced credit for time served, he's now left with 75 days on his sentence.

Second probation breach

The September 2024 breach of probation charge is the second time he's been convicted of breaching his three-year probation order stemming from his manslaughter conviction.

Pirko spent nearly four months in jail between October 2023 and February 2024, after he was found by police carrying brass knuckles and a knife, in breach of his probation conditions.

During sentencing on those charges in February, his lawyer Melissa Lowe noted Pirko has struggled with substance abuse for many years and he hadn't been attending a substance abuse management course as was directed by his probation officer.

“He may have had a slip up back in the fall, but he's gotten back onto that program,” Lowe said in February. “He's looking forward to doing some of the programming with probation going forward.”

Pirko apologized to the court in February, saying “I know I need to step my game up when it comes to my probation order, and I will.”

Fatal hammer strikes

Pirko's earlier manslaughter conviction came from an incident on Highway 33 near Rutland Road, in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, 2014.

Pirko and his friend Elrich Dyck were walking south along the highway when they came upon Chris Ausman walking north, on the other side of the road. Ausman had recently left a poker game with friends. All three men were intoxicated.

Pirko and Dyck had never met Ausman before, but words were exchanged and the pair ran over to Ausman. Ausman and Dyck then engaged in a fistfight.

As Ausman got the upper hand, Pirko came up from behind Ausman and struck him multiple times in the head with a hammer. The blows proved fatal.

Pirko and Dyck left Ausman’s lifeless body on the sidewalk and fled the area. An RCMP officer came upon Ausman’s body later that morning.

Conviction overturned

The killing remained unsolved for years, until Pirko was arrested and charged in November 2016. He was convicted of the murder after a seven-week trial in the spring of 2019, and he was handed a life sentence with no chance of parole for 11 years.

He'd still be behind bars today if it wasn't for the BC Court of Appeal overturning the conviction four years later, ruling that Justice Allan Betton’s instructions to the jury were “so confusing as to amount to error in law.”

Rather than proceed with another trial, the Crown accepted the manslaughter plea and he was released from custody on time served, with an additional three years of probation.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t regret what I did," Pirko told Ausman's family during his sentencing. "I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I hope one day you will understand my side. I will continue to try to better myself.