A man arrested in Penticton is facing second-degree murder charges, stemming from an incident in the Lower Mainland.
Shayne Daniel Duncan McGenn is charged with the second-degree murder of 63-year-old Abbotsford resident David Delaney on Feb. 7. McGenn was taken into custody to appear in Abbotsford court on Friday after a short appearance in Penticton court Monday.
Co-accused Sarah Margaret Sather appeared before the Justice of the Peace on May 14 according to court documents online. Sather is charged with being an accessory to a murder after the fact. She is scheduled to appear in Abbotsford Provincial Court May 18.
According to the Abbotsford News, Delaney was the head chef at the Big River Restaurant and Taphouse in Coquitlam and was discovered in the Aspen Court apartment building in Abbotsford after a horrid smell had tipped off tenants that there was something wrong.
Abbotsford Police Department major crime detectives and officers with the forensic identification unit were called to the apartment building and the investigation was turned over to the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team.
Martha Janzen, who was the building manager where Delaney was found dead told the Abbotsford News that she had called the maintenance person when they could not locate the source of the odour. They knocked on Delaney’s suite, located next door to the tenant who complained and when they didn’t get an answer they unlocked the door and went in.
“As soon as we opened the door, we knew there was something wrong in there,” Janzen told the Abbotsford News.
They opened the closed bedroom door and the maintenance man walked into the room, as Janzen held back. She said they saw Delaney’s body on the bed, and there was no blood or any other apparent sign of trauma.
“We thought he had maybe just died in his sleep,” she said.
They immediately called 911, and police arrived on the scene.
“It (the death) is hard, because we didn’t know him that well, but we did talk and we were friendly. He was what you would call a model tenant — somebody we didn’t ever have to worry about, never caused any problems,” she said.
Mario Facchin, who owns the Rendezous Restaurant on Mt. Lehman Road, was friends with Delaney for about 40 years and described him as “an excellent person” with an easygoing nature.
The two first met when they were both working at a Denny’s restaurant in Vancouver in the 1970s, and Delaney later worked for Facchin in Abbotsford.
“I’m so broken-hearted,” Facchin said of his friend’s passing.
McGenn does not have a prior criminal record, according to the provincial court database.
His Twitter feed, last updated in 2013, indicates he was living in Penticton at the time, and it’s not known how long he might have been in Abbotsford.
Sather also does not have a prior criminal record. Her Facebook page indicates that she attended high school in Penticton and post-secondary studies at Okanagan University College. Dave Delaney is one of her Facebook “friends.”