Defence opts to take 1st-degree murder charge straight to trial in 2024 Saskatoon homicide

SaskatoonA man charged in connection with Saskatoon’s first homicide of 2024 is joining two co-accused and going straight to trial.Dillon Singler 1 of 3 accused of killing Lee PerkinsDan Zakreski · CBC News · Posted: Sep 25, 2025 2:28 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours agoKimbal MacMillan, defence lawyer for Dillon Singler, opted to go straight to trial rather than proceed with a preliminary hearing Thursday on Singler’s charge of first-degree murder. (Dan Zakreski/CBC)A Saskatoon man charged with first-degree murder in connection with the city’s first homicide of 2024 is going straight to trial.Dillon Singler is one of three people accused of killing Lee Perkins in February 2024. Singler, Edin Vrazalica and Chantal Lee McLaren are all charged with first-degree murder.Singler appeared in provincial court Thursday for his preliminary hearing. But defence lawyer Kimbal MacMillan opted to go straight to trial.”We are consenting to have this go to KB, or King’s Bench, for trial. We’re not going to argue that they don’t have enough evidence,” he said outside court.”So it doesn’t have to be, at this point, beyond a reasonable doubt, not even on a balance of probabilities — just at the end of the preliminary hearing is there some kind of evidence that, if it was all in, could have some kind of conviction.” 3rd suspect charged with murder in connection with Saskatoon’s 1st homicide of 2024 Crown prosecutor Cory Bliss confirmed that Singler’s co-accused are also going direct to trial at Court of King’s Bench — Vrazalica on charges of first-degree murder and offering an indignity to a body, and McLaren on charges of being an accessory after the fact and offering an indignity to a body. According to court documents, the allegation of offering an indignity to Perkins’s remains involved “mutilating and contorting his body to fit into a Rubbermaid tote for disposal.”Police had gone to the city’s Pacific Heights neighbourhood on Feb. 3, 2024, to execute a search warrant on a house on Lisgar Avenue. Vrazalica was wounded by officers at the house. The province’s Serious Incident Response Team is involved in the investigation because of the shooting.While searching the home, police found Perkins’s body.ABOUT THE AUTHORDan Zakreski is a reporter for CBC Saskatoon.