Melissa Martens-Lagasse has been sentenced on a charge of second-degree murder, January 31, 2023. (Photo: Lethbridge News Now)

By Chris Brown

Life sentence for Medicine Hat woman in 2021 murder

Feb 1, 2023 | 2:16 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – A judge in Lethbridge delivered his sentence in a second-degree murder case involving a Medicine Hat woman on Tuesday, January 31, 2023.

Appearing in Lethbridge Court of King’s Bench, Melissa Martens-Lagasse, 27, of Medicine Hat, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 14 years.

Martens-Lagasse pleaded guilty in September 2022 to strangling another woman to death while on a road trip from B.C. to Alberta in November 2021.

She was originally charged with first-degree murder in the death of Megan Eekma.

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.

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She then drove to an area 27 kilometres southeast of Pincher Creek where she dumped Eekma’s body and the rope used to strangle her. Martens-Lagasse then drove to Medicine Hat.

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

READ MORE: Lethbridge News Now