Kyle Ordway pleaded guilty to manslaughter after Amy Watts was pushed off a 50-foot cliff near Nanaimo City Hall in May 2021.
B.C.’s Court of Appeal has reduced the sentence for a man who pushed a woman off a cliff in Nanaimo.
Kyle Ordway was sentenced to four years less time served after pleading guilty to manslaughter last August, after pushing Amy Watts, 27, off a 15-metre cliff near Nanaimo City Hall on May 8, 2021.
Police found Watts’s body in a wooded ravine almost a month later, on June 3.
The court heard in August that Ordway told people he and Watts had been arguing and when he pushed her, he didn’t realize there was no railing in the area.
At sentencing, the Crown and defence made a joint submission for four years’ incarceration, less credit for Ordway’s pre-sentence custody at the usual rate of 1.5 to 1.
In imposing the four-year sentence Oct. 24, 2024, however, the judge gave Ordway slightly reduced credit for his pre-sentence custody in order to arrive at a federal sentence, which is two or more years.
Sentences under that duration are served in provincial prisons.
On appeal, Ordway argued the sentencing judge erred by departing from the joint submission on sentence in relation to credit for his pre-sentence custody.
“The Crown agrees the judge erred as alleged,” Chief Justice Leonard Marchand said inhis decision, released June 10. “Respectfully, so do I.”
Ordway must now serve four years less 762 days of pre‑sentence credit — based on 508 days in custody — resulting in a sentence of 698 days’ imprisonment, or just under two years.
The new sentence is deemed to begin on the date of Ordway’s original sentence, Oct. 28, 2024, Marchand said.