Less than three months after he was sentenced to time served for a 2014 killing in Rutland and released from custody, Steven Pirko is back behind bars.
Pirko was convicted in 2019 of the second-degree murder of 32-year-old Chris Ausman, and was sentenced to a life sentence with no chance of parole until mid-2028. But Pirko successfully appealed the conviction and instead pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
This past July, he was sentenced to time served and was released from custody with three years of probation.
Earlier this week, Pirko was charged with carrying concealed brass knuckles and carrying a knife outside of his home, in breach of his probation conditions.
The charges stem from an incident on Oct. 21, 2021. An additional charge of failing to comply with a probation order is alleged to have occurred between Sept. 22 and Oct. 13.
The new charges were laid on Oct. 22 and after Judge Andrew Tam ordered his detention Monday, Pirko remains in custody. He’s scheduled to return to court on Nov. 7.
Pirko had been out of jail since July 6, when he was sentenced to time served on the previous manslaughter conviction. Prior to that he had been in custody since his previous arrest in 2016.
His overturned second-degree murder conviction, and then manslaughter conviction, stemmed from an incident in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, 2014 on Highway 33 in Kelowna’s Rutland area.
Pirko and his friend Elrich Dyck were walking south on the highway near Rutland Road when they came upon Ausman walking north, on the other side of the road. Ausman had recently left a poker game with friends. All three men were intoxicated.
Pirko and Dyck had never met Ausman before, but words were exchanged, the pair ran over to Ausman and a fight between Ausman and Dyck broke out.
As Ausman got the upper hand in the fist fight, Pirko came up from behind Ausman and struck him multiple times in the head with a hammer he had been carrying.
The blows proved fatal.
Pirko and Dyck left Ausman’s lifeless body on the sidewalk and fled the area. An RCMP officer came upon Ausman’s body later that morning.
Pirko was arrested and charged in the killing in November 2016 . Following a seven-week trial in the spring of 2019 a jury convicted Pirko of the murder and he was sentenced to a life sentence, with no chance of parole for 11 years.
But four years later, the BC Court of Appeal overturned the conviction, ruling that Justice Allan Betton’s instructions to the jury were “so confusing as to amount to error in law.”
Rather than proceed with another trial, the Crown accepted a plea to manslaughter, and Pirko was sentenced to eight years in jail on July 6, 2023. But with enhanced time served credit of nine years, he was released from custody with an additional three years of probation.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t regret what I did," Pirko told Ausman's family during his sentencing. "I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I hope one day you will understand my side. I will continue to try to better myself."
Now, Pirko is back behind bars after allegedly breaching his probation conditions by carrying the brass knuckles and knife.
