Man Pleads Guilty in Teen Girl’s Hit-and-Run Death

March 20, 2010

Barbara Brown

The Hamilton Spectator

(Mar 20, 2010)

Tom Shade, who went by the name Magic, immediately called this mechanic he knew who had previously worked on his 1995 Chrysler Sebring.

When Hamilton police later interviewed the mechanic, he told them Magic had called about a new window and some body work.

"Magic said he got in a fight" and some stupid stuff happened.

"Magic needed it fixed right away because if the police found the car, he would be going to jail for a long time and Magic wasn't joking," said the mechanic.

Shade, 27, pleaded guilty to manslaughter yesterday, admitting to using his car as a weapon to run over and kill a 15-year-old girl on an east Hamilton street on the night of Apr. 7, 2008.

The Pickering man had been facing a charge of second-degree murder in the slaying of Ashleigh Maegan Carmichael but struck a deal with the Crown to plead guilty to the lesser and included offence.

Assistant Crown attorney Craig Fraser said he will seek 10 years in a penitentiary, and defence lawyer Tyler Smith a term of six to seven years, when Shade returns to court for sentencing on June 18.

Superior Court Justice Stephen Glithero heard that Maegan and her brother Justin were among a group of young people who were embroiled in a violent argument with Shade and a female companion, Candace Colby.

The altercation stemmed from an incident a year earlier when Colby allegedly attacked Justin with a baseball bat and struck him several times on the head.

Maegan, Justin and their mother, Debbie Carmichael, were in the process of moving their family belongings out of their Barton Street East residence when the teenager was struck and killed.

Shade and Colby had gone to a neighbouring house looking to buy some marijuana. They were told the former tenants no longer lived there and the current residents did not sell drugs.

When another family member arrived home with several friends, she recognized Colby as the woman who had assaulted her next-door neighbour with a baseball bat. The situation escalated to a major confrontation that came to include Maegan and her brother.

When the fight spilled out into the street, Colby started to run and was chased by the group of young people into a municipal parking lot on the east side of Cheever Street, just north of Barton.

According to an agreed statement of facts, Shade was swarmed and sucker-punched twice by an unknown person. He confronted Maegan, her brother and others in the group. He then went to his car and took a set of brass knuckles out of the trunk. Another man whom Shade knew tried to cool him down and persuaded him not to use the weapon.

The group turned back and started walking west down an alley, north of Barton Street.

"At least one member of the group was armed with a baseball bat," Fraser said. "There was some evidence of racial slurs being uttered to Mr. Shade, but not by the deceased or her brother."

Shade jumped in his vehicle and accelerated rapidly into the alley and toward the group of people, most of whom jumped out of his way.

As he pulled out of the alley onto Cheever Street, Shade again accelerated and steered his vehicle straight at Maegan, who was crossing the street to the west sidewalk. The teenager was struck and dragged under the vehicle onto the front lawn of a house.

Maegan was taken by ambulance to Hamilton General Hospital where she died of massive trauma to her entire body.

"I was hit by the car while trying to pull her out from underneath it," said Justin Carmichael, 21. "Looking back on that night, though, I wish a few things went differently. I wish we didn't even go back there (to the residence the family was moving out of) and just came back the next day to get the rest of our stuff."

At the time of the offence, Shade was on parole and serving a two-year sentence for drug trafficking.