A Halifax man facing two counts of first-degree murder in the April 2016 shooting deaths of Tyler Richards and Naricho Clayton made his first court appearance on the charges Monday.
Tyrell Peter Dechamp, 27, appeared in Halifax provincial court under heightened security.
Dechamp was arrested Friday at the Renous Institution in New Brunswick and transported toHalifax for questioning. Police announced Saturday that charges had been laid.
Dechamp is also charged with attempted murder and unlawfully being at large.
Judge Ann Marie Simmonds, in her first day sitting on the bench, ordered Dechamp to return to court Jan. 10.
Richards, 29, of Dartmouth, was found dead inside a house in the 600 block of Cook Avenue in Halifax on the evening of April 17, 2016. Sources say he had been tied to a
chair and shot in the head at point-blank range.
Two nights later, police responded to a shooting in the 2000 block of Gottingen Street in Halifax and found two victims in a vehicle. Clayton, 23, of Dartmouth, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The other person shot in the car, a 31-year-old Halifax man, was taken to hospital with lifethreatening injuries but survived. He’s identified in court documents as Ricardo Jerrel Whynder. Dechamp was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009 for a 2007 stabbing in Halifax.
In 2012, he was convicted of aggravated assault for suckerpunching a woman at a Halifax bar.
Dechamp was released from prison in February 2016 after serving two-thirds of his sentences. He failed to return to his Halifax halfway house on the night of Clayton’s homicide.
Police issued a Canada-wide warrant for Dechamp’s arrest the next day and
he was apprehended in Ottawa on April 28, 2016.
On Monday, Crown attorney Rick Woodburn said the firstdegree murder charges mean police allege that the Richards and Clayton homicides were planned and deliberate.
“These weren’t heat-of-themoment murders,” Woodburn said outside court.
Both shootings remain under investigation, the prosecutor said. “There is a possibility that more people could be arrested.”
Woodburn said he probably won’t be able to disclose much evidence to Dechamp’s lawyer until the end of January.
The judge remanded Dechamp back into custody. If he wants bail, he will have to make an application in Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
-STEVE BRUCE THE CHRONICLE HERALD
