In the shadowed hours of an otherwise unremarkable October eve in 2019, the peaceful repose of Ryan Gatzke’s North Battleford abode was shattered forever. A former employee of the Gold Eagle Casino, driven by greed and perhaps malice, whispered into the eager ears of the Terror Squad—a group notorious in Saskatchewan’s underbelly for their stark garb and ruthless commerce in narcotics and brutality—a certain knowledge: the Gatzke household brimmed with winnings and potentially, cannabis.
Their loot, a modest bounty of $1,500, had been secured at the very same casino tables which the informant had stalked like a silent panther before his departure from the establishment. Gatzke, a soon-to-be father of twenty-seven, had reveled with his wife in the small triumph of fortune, indulging in the casino’s offerings of sustenance and spirit, wholly unaware of the damning course set in motion.
The darkness that followed was punctuated by the creak of a bedroom door. The silhouette of a man, gun readied, heralded the nightmare incarnate. Three members of the insidious Terror Squad—Jacob Ballantyne, Isaac Melko, and a juvenile whose name is swallowed by the maw of legal protection—had descended upon their place of sanctuary, fueled by substances that promised to sever the tethers of morality. Outside, another predator, Charles McLean, lurked, prepared to pilot their escape.
The home birthed chaos; tendrils of drug addled intoxication clashing with the primordial urge to protect life and love. An SKS rifle and a 9mm handgun were the harbingers of doom, brandished with impunity. Yet it was the juvenile’s hand that steered a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, and in the tumultuous dance, delivered two shots that cleaved the air, thudding into Gatzke—his right coronary artery severed, lifeblood ebbing as he crumpled.
As Gatzke lay fraught upon the ground, the juvenile stepped over him, unfazed, the echo of the gunshot melding into the darkness, according to court transcripts. Despite the attempts at psychological unraveling, court-appointed psychiatrists could only describe the young offender as an entity untethered by conscience or regret, his heart a locked fortress to emendation, his soul entwined inexorably with the gang’s ethos.
The sentencer’s gavel fell, divvying out the years: nine and a half for the juvenile, a life usurped by cold metal and colder hearts. Eight for Ballantyne, twelve for Melko, and a quartet for McLean. Each term a tally of justice’s endeavors to balance scales unbalanced by reckless inhumanity.
In the somber tableau of the courthouse, Ryan Gatzke’s mother, June, bore her anguished testament to a life violently halted. Her son, she recounted, was a man of labor and laughter, stalwartly erecting a future for his betrothed and their unborn. “It rips my heart every time. It rips my heart every day,” she laid bare her sorrow, each word a palpable testimony to the unassuageable void left in the wake of unbridled violence.
