Canadian man gets 9-year jail term for 2021 killing of Indian Sikh youth

IANS

Toronto, May 15

A 21-year-old Canadian man has been sentenced to nine years in prison for stabbing an Indian national to death in an unprovoked attack in Nova Scotia province in 2021, a media report said.

Prabhjot Singh Katri, the 23-year-old who moved from India to Nova Scotia in 2017, was stabbed in the neck by Cameron James Prosper on September 5, 2021, as he was walking to his car after leaving a friend's apartment at 494 Robie St in Truro, the Global News reported.

Justice Jeffrey Hunt said the attack was "made without rational cause", but without intent to kill Katri.

"The family of the deceased has been devastated by his senseless death," he said. aceAn entire community was left shocked and hurting." Prosper was initially charged with second-degree murder, but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter during a court appearance in December 2022.

Before his death, Katri was working at Layton's Taxi to support his mother back home.

The court heard that Prosper had been outside the building with Dylan Robert MacDonald when Katri left his friend's apartment to go home.

After Prosper stabbed Katri with a folding hunting knife, which was never recovered, the victim ran back to his friend's apartment, and his friends called the police.

The cop who responded to the scene found Katri "lying in a large pool of blood", with two males holding a cloth to his neck in an attempt to stem the bleeding.

Prosper and MacDonald fled the scene in the latter's white Honda Civic, and Katri was rushed to hospital where he succumbed to his wounds.

Police arrested MacDonald who was initially charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact, driving to evade police, two counts of dangerous driving and obstruction of justice, the Global News reported.

He received a 14-month conditional sentence order and 12 months probation for obstructing justice, a $1,000 fine, a one-year licence suspension, and a one-year vehicle prohibition order for dangerous driving.

Crown prosecutor Thomas Kayter had said in a hearing earlier this year that there is no evidence Prosper and Katri knew each other before the stabbing.

In addition, he said that there is no evidence that the crime was motivated by hate or racism.

"The motive remains unknown, and the evidence known to the Crown indicates that the violence was unprovoked, spontaneous and gratuitous insofar that Prabhjot Singh Katri did nothing to incite or provoke Cameron Prosper to violence," Kayter said in January 2023.

Katri's mother, who had flown from India for the May 12 hearing, described her son, a young student and taxi driver, as "innocent, and a very gentle person".

"I want to ask, why did you do it? Because of your actions I will never be able to see his (Katri's) wedding, welcome his bride in my home, play with my grandchildren," she said in a victim impact statement.

"I am truly sorry, like, genuinely sorry about this... If I could go back in time I would change it," Prosper said, apologising to Katri's family.

In Canada, the maximum sentence for manslaughter is life in prison, and there is no minimum sentence for manslaughter unless a firearm is involved.

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