Melissa Lynn Martens-Lagasse is expected to be sentenced on a charge of second-degree murder in January 2023. (Photo: Lethbridge News Now)

By Brian Konrad

Second-degree murder sentencing for Southern Albertan to take place Jan. 2023

Nov 28, 2022 | 2:27 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB — A Medicine Hat woman who plead guilty to killing her friend one year ago will return to Court of King’s Bench in Lethbridge early next year.

A Gladue report for Melissa Lynn Martens-Lagasse, 27, has been completed, and her case was adjourned to January 31, 2023, for sentencing arguments.

She was originally charged with first degree murder in the death of Megan Eekma on November 19, 2021, but plead guilty to second degree murder in September 2022.

In an agreed statement of facts, Martens-Lagasse said she put a rope around the neck of her friend as she was sleeping in the back seat of a car at a gas station in Fort MacLeod.

She then drove to an area 27 kilometers southeast of Pincher Creek where she dumped Eekma’s body and the rope used to strangle her friend.

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Martens-Lagasse then drove to Medicine Hat.

Eekma’s body was found by travellers on November 19, 2021.

Martens-Lagasse was arrested by Medicine Hat City Police four days later and charged with first-degree murder.

READ MORE: Lethbridge News Now