Nearly two months after a man was found dead in a Kelowna home a woman has been charged with second-degree murder.
On Oct. 18, just before 7 a.m., Kelowna RCMP was called to the residence on Bechard Road following a suspicious death. Officers arrested a 54-year-old woman but she was released the next day without charge. She was then apprehended again under the Mental Health Act and taken to Kelowna General Hospital.
During a press conference on Oct. 21, Supt. Kara Triance said the RCMP recommended a first-degree murder charge to the B.C. Prosecution Service but it was not approved based on the initial evidence sent.
The case is “a matter of intimate partner violence,” Triance said, and that the man and the woman were living in the house together. Neither of the two was known to police before the incident.
Now, the B.C. Public Prosecution Service has approved a second-degree murder charge against Billie Jo Bennett.
Bennett was arrested in Kamloops on Dec. 8, appeared in a Kelowna court the same day and remains in custody.
READ MORE: Woman arrested after cops find body in Kelowna home, death deemed suspicious
@Jen_zee
jen.zielinski@bpdigital.ca
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