Cold case closed: Life without parole for 13 years for 2018 execution-style murder in front of children at Chilliwack apartment

Tyler Christensen shot Kyle Cromarty in the back on Oct. 4, 2018 as kids looked on in a parking lot

When school bells ring out ending a day of classes, kids flow out to sidewalks and streets, riding bikes and scooters in neighbourhoods across Chilliwack.

That was the scene on Oct. 4, 2018 in the parking lot at an apartment building on the north side of Yale Road just east of Menzies. Children noticed a short, stocky man loitering by the building, walking up and down Yale Road. The kids thought the stranger was there to steal their bikes.

What he was there to do, however, and what those children would witness, was much, much worse.

At approximately 2:40 p.m. that fall Thursday, Kyle Cromarty drove into the parking lot of the IGA on Menzies. He parked his vehicle in the parking lot, and walked towards the building where he lived at 46756 Yale Rd. He walked right past the loitering man whom he did not know, Tyler Harry Christensen.

As they passed one another, Christensen turned around and followed Cromarty into the breezeway of the building leading to the parking lot where kids were playing. Christensen pulled out a silver handgun and fired twice. The first bullet hit Cromarty in the back and entered the 27-year-old man’s heart. The second struck him somewhere in the hip area.

Christensen tossed the now empty gun on the ground and fled on foot east on Yale Road. 

Video surveillance from the area showed children also fleeing the scene when shots rang out, some kids witnessing an execution-style murder in their neighbourhood, near their homes, shortly after school dismissal.

Christensen ran down Yale turning to run on the west side of an apartment about a block away. He jumped a fence into a yard where a woman was sitting on her patio. He ran by her, jumped another fence and got into a Dodge Caravan that drove away at a high-rate of speed. It was driven by a female who was waiting, appearing nervous, according to a witness. 

The first officer to arrive on the scene was RCMP Const. Keven Biagioni who encountered Cromarty lying on the ground. Biagioni turned him over and the officer saw two bullet holes that were not yet bleeding. Cromarty was taken to Chilliwack General Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Cold case

“Fuck the police,” Harry Tyler Christensen posted on social media two years after he murdered Kyle Cromarty, bragging that police "ain't got shit on me.”

He spoke too soon.

While the death traumatized Cromarty’s family, including his parents, his sister and her young daughter who greatly looked up to her Uncle Kyle, the case went cold. Christensen returned to Edmonton where he was from, and then went further north. He was off to deal drugs in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, a town with a population of 3,000 on the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean.

A year and a half after killing Cromarty, a 28-year-old Christensen got arrested in a hotel in Inuvik along with 21-year-old Mariah Sharphead. A search warrant turned up three shotguns, ammunition, drugs, digital scales, cellphones, and drug packaging materials.

In September 2020, Christensen shared that comment about the police on his Facebook page, but he would turn out to be dead wrong. 

When the case of Cromarty’s murder went cold, it was transferred to IHIT’s cold case unit in March 2021, the unit being a team specializing in challenging homicide investigations. More than four years later, DNA linked Christensen to Cromarty’s killing. On Nov. 25, 2022, he was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. On March 26, 2025, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

The sentences for first- and second-degree murder are both life in prison. The difference being that first-degree murder comes with no chance of parole for at least 25 years. For second-degree it is up to a judge to decide between 10 and 25 years before parole eligibility.

The case languished in court during the pandemic but justice finally came this week at a sentencing hearing in B.C. Supreme Court in Chilliwack.

Several members of Cromarty’s family attended the hearing, wearing “Justice for Kyle” pins. His niece had a T-shirt with that message. All of them finally got to look Christensen in the eye in courtroom 202 on Tuesday (Nov. 25, 2025) for the 35-year-old’s sentencing after spending three years at the Surrey Pretrial Centre.

After reading a brief agreed statement of facts, Crown counsel Amy Carter invited family members up to read gut-wrenching victim impact statements. 

“Lost,” sister Chelsey Cromarty said, emphasizing that one word. “For seven years now I’ve been lost, changed forever. 

“I never feared the dark, but now I tremble at dusk, fearful every day when I leave for work in the morning hours.”

Her daughter Leah, Kyle's niece, was brought into the courtroom to hear her mother talk before she gave her tear-filled statement.

“My uncle was my favourite person and we did everything together,” she said in part. “The situation has made me suffer with anxiety and depression. . . . I get upset when I have nightmares about what happened to my Uncle Kyle.”

Kyle’s mother then gave a victim impact statement, all the while Christensen sat stone-faced in the prisoners’ box, leaning back in his seat very gently tapping the back of his head against the courtroom wall.

After the statements, Carter gave some background on Christensen’s tumultuous childhood with alcoholic parents, substance use from a young age, and ongoing criminality and gang affiliation.

What never came out at the hearing nor was every properly explained to the court is “why?” What was the motive for the killing that was so obviously planned and targeted.?

Christensen’s lawyer would later say that Cromarty’s apartment was the source of drug dealing and that shatter was found in the bathroom of the apartment, and firearms were present. (Shatter is a potent cannabis concentrate named for its hard, glass-like appearance.)

After his submissions, Carter would respond to the implication that Cromarty was a drug dealer, pointing out that he worked at a cannabis store. As for the guns, he had a PAL, a legal firearms licence.

Carter argued that the moral culpability in this case was at “the highest order” such that Christensen’s time before parole eligibility should be a the higher end in the 15-to-20-year range. She gave several cases to use as precedents asking in the end for the judge to sentence him to life with no chance of parole for 15 years. Among the cases given were that of Abbotsford gangster Jonathan Bacon who was murdered in Kelowna in August 2011, hit by a hail of bullets in an SUV he was in. His killer was given life with no chance of parole for 18 years.

Carter pointed to the fact that the murder was planned and carried out execution style, and that it was done in broad daylight in front of children, all aggravating factors. As mitigating factors, Carter pointed to his guilty plea, which saved the need for a lengthy trial for the case that would have been mostly circumstantial and involve very young witnesses.

Christensen’s lawyer pointed to these latter elements as reasons why he should receive parole eligibility at the lower end. He asked for 11 years. One precedent he gave was the 2016 murder of Rob Splitt in downtown Chilliwack, killed in cold blood in the Save-On parking lot by Gerald Dolman, who received life with no chance of parole for 11 years.

At the end of submissions, Christensen was asked if he wanted to speak. He stood up and gave a somewhat rambling, clearly unprepared statement talking about life and death and time passing, skirting around but finally getting to an apology.

“There's nothing I can possibly say that could heal, nor bring back Mr. Cromarty,” he said in part, adding that when he was in his 20s he didn’t care about his actions but now that he is older with children of his own, he feels remorse.

“I pray every day for forgiveness. I hope the family can, in due time, forgive. I know they can’t forget…. It’s time, it’s over, and we have to move on.”

Christensen was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 13 years.

-30-

Want to support independent journalism?
Consider becoming a paid subscriber or make a one-time donation so I can continue this work.

Paul J. Henderson
pauljhenderson@gmail.com
facebook.com/PaulJHendersonJournalist
instagram.com/wordsarehard_pjh
x.com/PeeJayAitch
wordsarehard-pjh.bsky.social

-30-

-30-

Want to support independent journalism?
Consider becoming a paid subscriber or make a one-time donation so I can continue this work.

Paul J. Henderson
pauljhenderson@gmail.com
facebook.com/PaulJHendersonJournalist
instagram.com/wordsarehard_pjh
x.com/PeeJayAitch
wordsarehard-pjh.bsky.social