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A Stratford man charged with second-degree murder in a woman’s shooting death had his case adjourned to Oct. 24 to get legal aid and hire a lawyer.
Keith Savile, 41, was arrested early Tuesday after police and paramedics were called to his 475 Ontario St. apartment. Kassidy Ballantyne-Holmes was found unresponsive after she was shot and died later in Stratford General Hospital.
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Savile also is charged with possessing a gun without a licence, carrying a weapon for the purpose of committing an offence, and manufacturing a firearm without authorization.
“One firearm . . . was recovered at the scene,” Stratford police spokesperson Const. Aaron Mounfield said Wednesday.
Savile remains in custody.
“It’s a loss to our community, a huge loss for both lives,” Stratford Mayor Martin Ritsma said Thursday.
This week’s shooting struck a little deeper for Ritsma, who went to school with Savile’s dad. He was also a teacher and then principal at Northwestern when Savile and Ballantyne-Holmes were students. His son went to the same daycare as the accused.
“To see this scenario unfold, you wonder about the dots that weren’t connected along the way,” Ritsma said. “It’s a big leap from Anne Hathaway daycare to an adult male who has been arrested for murder. You wonder about that gap. What happened in that gap?”
Ritsma said he’s wrestled with those emotions since learning of the homicide – the city’s second fatal shooting this year, almost 11 weeks after a neighbourhood dispute turned deadly. Before this year, Stratford’s last shooting death happened in 1993.
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“Where do we fall short in society?” Ritsma wondered. “These things don’t just happen. What were things that we needed to identify . . . so we didn’t have these moments today?
“Knowing that person (Savile) and family on both sides, it’s a little bit more difficult to grapple with. It’s not a statistic, it’s a life. It’s not data, it’s emotion. Somewhere along the way, that innocence is damaged and the end result is sometimes tragedy.”
Stratford police are still investigating. Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact police at 519-271-4141, ext. 8116, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or p3tips.com.
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