Canadian gets 9 years in jail for stabbing Indian to death
Toronto: 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.