“This is a pain that doesn’t go away,” Roxanne Pallot, Aspen Pallot’s grandmother, told Global News.
“I was sitting right here. My daughter phoned, and she said, ‘Mommy, he killed her. ‘”
Aspen was only 19 years old when her body was found in a Richmond home in October 2018.
“If you knew Aspen, you knew that she was a loving, loving person,” Pallot said.
Twenty-three-year-old Solaris Onatta Running Dey was charged with one count of manslaughter in connection with her death. The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said at the time that the two were a couple.
Earlier this month, Dey was charged with aggravated assault of a police officer and assault of a peace officer with a weapon after randomly attacking a Vancouver police officer on the Downtown Eastside.
Dey has an extensive criminal history, aside from the manslaughter conviction for Pallot’s death.
Recent charges include breaching probation orders, uttering threats and assaulting a peace officer, with that charge stemming from an incident in New Westminster in November, which involved someone resisting arrest and spitting on an officer.
Roxanne said Dey should never have been out in the first place.
“I felt really bad for the officer,” she said.
“I really did, because he is another victim of him, of Sol. And there’s going to be more if he’s always let out, there will be more… it didn’t really surprise me that he would do something like that. I mean, he did it to us. He did it to Aspen, so why not now?”
Roxanne said her greatest fear is Dey harming another woman like her granddaughter.
“They keep saying how he is so mentally disturbed and everything else,” she added. “He has mental problems. Yet they let him out back on the street, saying he is a danger to society. Then why is society having to pay the price?”
Aspen’s uncle Randy Pallot echoed Roxanne’s comments and frustration.
“I don’t think he’ll ever have accountability for his actions,” Randy said, speaking of Dey.
“Then you can’t take back, you can’t apologize. There’s nothing you can do to make things right. So there is no way for him to be accountable for his actions.”
Randy said the system of incarceration and rehabilitation needs to be more accountable.
“There’s got to be more steps,” he said. “There’s not just the one step of, you know, incarceration, maybe a little bit of rehabilitation and then out the door you go and let’s see if you can survive.
“Because now that’s left up to society to figure out. It’s up to you and I to make sure if you see this guy to maybe walk the other way, or maybe not walk the other way and see if he needs help.”
Randy said Dey should not be allowed on the street.
But mainly, Randy wants people to remember his niece as a loving, funny and kind young woman.
“The comedic aspect of her … just shined,” he said.
“She always put a smile on your face, like, even if you weren’t feeling very good or whatever, she’d always come over. She’d sit next to you and nudge you whatever, you know, and say something to you. But she always brought a smile to your face.”
— with files from Rumina Daya