MARTIN: Senseless killing shattered Banff’s sense of safety

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The murder of Banff native Ethan Enns-Goneau not only robbed the idyllic mountain town of a favourite son, it also shattered the community’s sense of safety.

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Enns-Goneau’s inexplicable fatal stabbing inside the men’s room of the Dancing Sasquatch bar in the early morning hours of Aug. 5, 2022, was the first murder in Banff in more than 30 years.

And the fact the much-loved 26-year-old was a born and raised Banffite who had lived his entire life in the national park town struck far too close to home.

Prior to Enns-Goneau’s murder at the hands of transplanted Ontarian John Christopher Arrizza, the last time the town had to deal with such violence was years before the victim was born.

On May 17, 1990, cab driver Lucie Turmel was fatally stabbed on a quiet Banff street by Ryan Jason Love, a fare who had turned on her and chased her down, killing her with 17 stab wounds.

That murder, as horrendous as it was, would have been long-forgotten by the town’s residents who were there when it happened and likely would have been something Enns-Goneau and his contemporaries would either have not known about, or had only a vague knowledge of it.

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But Enns-Goneau’s killing would have shattered any sense of security residents in the picturesque mountain town had come to enjoy while welcoming visitors from the world-over every year.

That loss was expressed in more than two-dozen victim-impact statements filed for the sentencing of Arrizza, statements which showed how much the victim meant to the people of Banff, but also how his death impacted how they viewed their hometown.

Among those who filed statements was Enns-Goneau’s partner at the time, Lorianne Pieters, who not only spoke of the depth of her personal loss, but the impact the young man’s death had on the entire community.

“(Arrizza) not only robbed us of a partner, son, brother and friend, but he robbed the residents of Banff of a sense of security and safety when they go out at nighttime,” Pieters said.

“Our tight-knit community, a safe haven for so many that hadn’t suffered a homicide in over 32 years prior to this incident, has been forever tainted by this.”

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The fact that Enns-Goneau, by all accounts a friendly, happy-go-lucky young man, did nothing to provoke Arrizza’s deadly attack made its impact ever more profoundly disturbing to people’s sense of safety.

The victim had stopped into the Dancing Sasquatch after a night of bar hopping for a nightcap and immediately headed for the washroom on arrival.

Surveillance video of the hallway outside the men’s room showed Enns-Goneau was already beginning to undo his pants as he entered and his autopsy showed his bladder was virtually empty so in the 72 seconds it took for Arrizza to emerge from the washroom while repeatedly stabbing his victim the dead man had little time to do anything but relieve himself.

Arrizza, who had fallen into a life of drug and alcohol addiction prior to the killing, had nothing to add in terms of a motive for the death, making it that much more chilling.

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Among the others who filed victim-impact statements was Mayor Corrie DiManno, who wrote not only as the town’s leading representative, but as someone who knew Enns-Goneau and considered him a friend.

“It cracked the very foundation of everything we knew to be true about our small town,” DiManno said.

“We believed we were immune from this extreme and senseless violence, especially because it had been more than 30 years since a crime of this nature had happened in Banff.”

As if to punctuate that sense of loss, just a month later another man was fatally stabbed outside the same bar where Enns-Goneau was killed.

Hopefully, now, it will be decades before residents have to learn again that violence can happen anywhere.

KMartin@postmedia.com

X: @KMartinCourts

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