Family plans to appeal Calgarian’s 200 year stateside prison sentence

Plans to appeal 200 year sentence The family of Michael Ilk plans to appeal the sentence and conviction he received in a Montana courtroom. Jamie Mauracher has the latest.

The aunt of Michael Ilk, the 41-year-old Calgary man convicted of attempted deliberate homicide and aggravated assault in Montana, says plans have commenced to appeal both Ilk’s conviction and eye-popping sentence.

On August 29, Ilk was sentenced to 200 years in prison with no chance of parole in connection with the April 2015 shooting of Tyler Wilson and Hadassah Pereslete, Ilk’s ex-girlfriend, on a construction site in Montana. Wilson and Pereslete were each shot twice during the incident and both survived.

Ilk’s parents and his aunt, Cindy Mjolsness, were in the courtroom for the sentencing.

“I just started to shake. I couldn’t even stand up. It was too much,” said Mjolsness. “We did expect something but this was so far over the top it was shocking. Why did he even say it? Why didn’t he just say life with no parole? Really, that’s what he’s done.”

According to his aunt, Ilk is a Canadian citizen who summered in Montana. Since his arrest, Ilk has maintained his actions of April 15, 2015 were done in self-defence.

“(Michael) does not deserve a life in prison. He deserves consequences for his actions in this, absolutely. He is fully aware of it, fully prepared to pay the consequences for that,” said Mjolsness. “The other people involved should be paying consequences for what they did. They were laying in wait for him. They were there waiting for him to show up, with a gun, with every intention of doing something.”

“That man (Wilson) shot that gun off. That man charged him with his vehicle.”

Seaborn Larson, an editor with The Western News, a Libby, Montana, publication, covered the trial’s proceedings and says Ilk’s lawyers argued self-defence.

“The man in the pickup did have four guns in his car, two of them .45s,” said Larson. “So really, the question became who shot first.”

After five hours of deliberation, the jury found Ilk guilty.

In addition to the ‘shocking’ sentence and the ‘obnoxious’ $1 million bond, Mjolsness says her nephew’s trial was marred by an elderly jury consisting of members who struggled to hear the proceedings while others napped.

“They were not a jury of his peers, they were a jury of his grandparents,” said Mjolsness. ““If this wasn’t so serious and so horrifying, it’s laughable.”

Mjolsness says she has been in contact with the Canadian consulate since Ilk’s arrest and has been disappointed with the Canadian government’s inability to intervene on behalf of her nephew.

“With my last breath, I will do everything to get him out, to get him to a place where justice is served.” “We need another trial. We need somebody to listen to what’s happened here.”

With files from CTV's Jamie Mauracher