FULL STORY: When the Law isn’t Enough

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good evening and welcome to sixteen by nine by all accounts Kevin and Camille ronke were a couple in love they got married in 2013 after a whirlwind six-month courtship in Winnipeg but when they split last spring things took a nasty turn with stories of stalking and harassment Camille got a protection order against Kevin but the law couldn't keep her safe and last fall she was murdered tonight we take a closer look at how the system failed her and if the changes one province is making will be enough to keep women safe we're gonna be going to cams house I think just over the bridge we call it I haven't been there since right before she passed away something my first time going back Jen noon remembers how important home was to camille ronke she put on a lot of work and energy into it and she made the house her own it was her sanctuary a place she felt safe in it didn't stay that way for long she never would have thought that she needed like a security camera or anything here until everything started and everything changed with Kevin they needed like photographic evidence any kind of video surveillance that they had to catch him in the act it's a tragedy that unfolded like so many others I mean I feel I feel like there was so many things that could have happened and it just seems like the law doesn't work for the victim there are a lot of things Camille loved her truck her house her friends and in 2013 after six months of dating she loved Kevin drunky and married him when I first met them I thought they're a really nice couple you know we chitchat back and forth he was funny you know he would make jokes their first year was really good together she told me that their first year was you know she would probably describe it as magical but soon there were signs of trouble she wanted to believe that this was gonna be a good marriage and continued to be but I know that she had went for a trip in Mexico when she came back she said he was becoming very jealous when Camille caught Kevin cheating the marriage was over and that's when it all just started falling apart or his behavior had changed the break-up was tense feelings were hurt and the separation messy things quickly turned dark just one thing after another it just didn't stop tried to flood her basement but she looked out the window and she said she saw him walking away and she yelled out I see you I see you Kevin you know when he looked at her and he walked away there was many instances where she would have smashed windows in her truck slashed tires and nails and her tires he cut her brake lines and when she told me that he cut her brake lines that I knew it was very very serious and you don't even go around cutting brake lines if you're not trying to hurt someone Camille called police not once not twice but 22 times 22 times she told police Kevin was stalking or harassing her how do you turn on the blink of an eye wasn't an act that he was putting on with her this whole time was this always his true character Kevin's behavior surprised a lot of people except those who have dated him before I'd known him for so long and why would he do this and watch then there was a bit of disbelief this woman who were calling Julia says Kevin treated her like a princess for two years but when she ended the relationship she says he posted a nude picture of her online and slashed her tires the slashing of the tires I was scared kevin was never arrested still julia was frightened and made me worry that things were escalating more and more what what was going to be next if it wasn't gonna be my vehicle was it gonna be my house was they gonna be me she applied for a protection order but was denied it was terrifying in July 2015 Camille also applied for a protection order against Kevin this time the order was granted on her application she wrote he has a rifle and she heard a tapping at the window and she had gone to the window to look and all she saw was him standing at that point and she was pretty 110 percent sure that he had that gun that she knew about Kevin was charged with mischief for flooding her basement but the behavior continued Camille's growing fear was obvious in messages to Jen trust me I've dealt with about 300 police officers since June 13th but without proof they can't do a damn thing they were frustrated they you know it's not like that they were brushing her off I think they took her very seriously but they couldn't do anything Camille thought the protection order would keep her safe so the challenge with the wrong key case is the nature of what she was calling us for largely they were property related offenses that had occurred in the middle of the night when no one witnessed them that's disturbing stuff though yeah if I'm a woman at home alone and somebody slashing my tires yeah I'm afraid you know he was suspected in them for sure protection orders were put in place initially because the idea was that women shouldn't have to wait until they got hurt before they got some help from the police at the shelter in Selkirk Manitoba and apperture ski sees hundreds of women who were trying to protect themselves you know they say that well she didn't have evidence well that's why protection orders were put in place so that they didn't need evidence that police would respond and would take it seriously last year Manitoba received 1,100 applications for protection orders over half were dismissed we need to believe the woman when she says what is happening is her fear not enough in Camille's case she put everything in place that she could put in place to try and protect herself because nobody else was protecting her at that point so Camille was left building her fortress cameras went up around her home she caught a secret cell phone and told the neighbors to keep watch she was like just surrounded by cameras in that house you know just sitting there trying to catch him and trying to do something to save herself and she was scared she was losing weight she was getting sick over this after every incident every note every threat Camille was frightened time after time she called police but even with a protection order in place there was little they could do if I'm hearing you correctly it sounds like you're saying your officers hands were tied well insofar as they were tied because there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge him certainly he was spoken with he was cautioned at numerous times he's clearly the one doing this he's clearly everyone knows everyone knows and nobody can do anything Jen says off-duty police officers would even patrol past Camille's house I know if some that were friends with her who would actually come on their own time and just sit outside they were worried for her what does that say about the limitations that some of your officers are up against when it comes to protecting victims of domestic violence well III guess it strikes a it strikes a chord that you know we have to live within within the law and in a case like this one you know it would appear that that wasn't enough for us I told my mommy is going to kill her it's gonna take is something really bad to happen for someone to take it seriously Camille was going to change her last name back to the Bears she never got that chance we just could not have foreseen that it would lead to homicide and four days later she was killed the early morning hours of Friday October 30th Camille was going to work was I'm definitely like a 10-minute Drive at the most I can rush hour yeah I was pretty close to where she lived what happened next is unclear what we do know someone was waiting for her she had shown up for work she parked your vehicle like where she normally parked and she had gone to the door and that's all we know what happened she was shot struck at close range with a shotgun it just makes me angry because I felt again like it could have been prevented he's known to have a gun he's had restraining orders against him and one life has lost like her life is gone Kevin was nowhere to be found next changing the law to try to stop the killing the firearm and in the legislation is a result of the actual experience of Camille ronke I think in Camille's case that wouldn't have made any difference and you can get a gun just about anywhere in Winnipeg police respond more calls for domestic disturbances than traffic complaints it's the only call for service that actually hits double digits completely serious they're very serious in nature very violent situations are very volatile calls for service that are domestic related or probably amongst the highest in Canada for any police service here at Winnipeg that's almost 15,000 calls a year threats breaches of orders any sort of assault and last year in less than five months 22 calls came from Camille rung key it just requires more investigation investigative work to to get down to the truth Camille was murdered last October shot to death outside her work you know the domestic violence's it's been a it's been something that's been part of our society for a long time but as you can see in our talk there's there's limitations to what the law will allow without real evidence in 2014 67 women in Canada were killed by their partners or former partners eleven of those were in Manitoba it's one of the worst places in Canada for domestic violence in Canada we spend seven point four billion dollars a year on family violence domestic violence that's our court systems shelters the police everybody who has to respond protection orders are supposed to help stop domestic violence but in 2015 Colleen Sillitoe and Alberta Anastasia kusik in Ontario and Kati quoi NBC were all killed allegedly by men ordered to stay away that hasn't worked all that well we still see situations where women have you know 20 30 78 breaches of their protection order and nothing's happening in the case of Camille she had done everything she could everything she was supposed to but it still wasn't enough no one could have predicted the outcome here he had no history of violence at all and so that would that really makes it unique for for this cases he went from you know being suspect of a lot of mischief and property damage to to committing homicide you know I totally knew and I seem to be the only one who knew everybody else was like I can't believe he did this and I was like of course he did this like there were signs all over the place that he was going to do something that's why protection orders were put in place who goes out there and dumps nails in front of a person's vehicle these are not things that normal people do police need to look beyond whatever and believe women the police say they did believe Camille and a week before she was killed they warned Kevin about his behavior but charges were never laid could you have pressed for those criminal harassment charges sooner in hindsight sure you know we could have perhaps had no history of violence so I won't fault our investigators for not pushing it sooner she's kind of breaklines like how are we not taking this a little bit more seriously and they were like wow you know I think he's gonna just calm down soon and I mean nobody believed after Camille's murder on October 30th Kevin was a suspect but police couldn't find him it's it's just wondering where is he where is he while kevin was on the run police alerted his former girlfriend Julia worried he would come after her if he had more than one target on his list I don't I don't know I felt fear um I felt pity I felt like I should have done something for his family for her it may seem strange but Julia wishes someone was there to help Kevin he wanted to keep everything to himself I think that might have been the biggest problem was not talking to anyone about it it wasn't getting counseling he wasn't getting help he wasn't getting thrown in jail you know it was just this perfect storm and I really feel like we could have we could have done something more something more like arresting Kevin counseling or monitoring his actions and enforcing the protection order Camille had against him err on the side of safety rather than on the side of thinking that he's just a nice guy and that he's just upset well some of the people that are murdering their loved ones start out just upset she was trying to separate from him and she ended up getting killed so again it's not just Kem we want we want the laws to change and if it's gonna take hams story to do it we're gonna do it so sixteen by nine went to Manitoba's Minister of Justice to ask him what he's going to do does Manitoba have a domestic violence problem Society has a domestic violence problem Manitoba yeah and Manitoba has disproportionately suffered and women and children in this province have disproportionately suffered from domestic violence is that a yes yes now the province is proposing new legislation further restricting people with protection orders like a mandatory firearm ban guns like the one Kevin drunky owned with this new legislation have changed the situation Camille experienced these changes would have certainly reduced the risk how so it requires an immediate surrender to make sure that that gun is taken away the firearm ban in the legislation is a result of the actual experience of Camille Runge I think in Camille's case that wouldn't have made any difference you can get a gun just about anywhere she had a protection order it wouldn't have made any difference to her being murdered Anna wants stronger enforcement of protection orders and breaches taken more seriously it's their responsibility that's you know we don't have the manpower to do all the things we do but we do it they have a responsibility these breaches are put in place it's the law they need to respond deputy chiefs my says they did respond to Camille but there was little they could do there's limitations to what the law will allow without real evidence so you know there's lots to be considered that's why I think intervention and prevention programs still have to factor into this because we can't just respond and arrest our way out of this problem the province is also testing out GPS monitoring to track offenders or suspected offenders we have right now eight high-risk domestic violence offenders that are on electronic monitoring Kevin might not have qualified as high-risk there was a protection order against him and a charge of mischief but he didn't have a history of violence can you put that on somebody before they've been charged well that would be a constitutional issue for sure you know so so there are a whole bunch of hiccups here there would be a ton of hiccup so that would need to be worked out and and even that none of itself wouldn't necessarily make Camille safer but GPS technology could have helped Camille gather the evidence she so desperately needed I think it's a really good idea and I think that it needs to be investigated further and I really think that they can do some wonderful things for victims if they had that and I really believe that that might have been the only thing that would have saved saved cams life three days after Camille was murdered police tracked down Kevin to this road just outside Winnipeg he was armed I won't call it a standoff but but certainly they didn't go chasing it after him it was a wooded area the tactical unit was called in Kevin drove into the woods and stayed there inside his truck with his gun they discovered him within the vehicle and and and deceased so what Perry took his own life police say Kevin likely killed himself with the same gun that killed Camille it's two lives that are lost two different families that are torn that are without people that they loved it affects so many people to consider this case closed everything led us to believe that Kevin ronke was our our main suspect so we have no other no other information that would lead us to think anyone else was involved we need to get people speaking out about this and not just speaking out doing something about it every five days in Canada a woman is killed like her partner or former partner and with stats like that there will be more cases to come those changes to Manitoba loss strengthening protection orders are now in second reading expected to become law by next month still critics say much more needs to be done to protect women we'll be right back

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Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2016

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