The victim of a deadly 2022 stabbing outside a Surrey high school had come to the site looking to confront his killer, a B.C. court heard on Thursday.
Thursday’s sentencing hearing was suspended and rescheduled for a future date, after the victim’s mother collapsed in the courtroom and was taken away in an ambulance.
Mehakpreet Sehti, 18, was fatally stabbed shortly after noon in a parking lot outside Tamanawis Secondary in Newton on Nov. 22, 2022.
His killer, who cannot be identified because he was a youth at the time, was originally charged with second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter.
Sethi, who did not attend the school, worked as a delivery driver at the time, while his killer was a Grade 12 student at Tamanawis, a sentencing hearing heard Thursday.
Crown prosecutors told the court that Sethi’s girlfriend had told him that the offender had disrespected her.
Sethi went to the school in a pickup truck with several other people the following day looking to confront the offender, the Crown said.
The offender approached Sethi with a group of six to 10 other boys, leading to an altercation that turned physical when one of them pushed Sethi.
In the course of the confrontation, Sethi either pushed or grabbed the accused, who responded by stabbing him once in the chest before driving away in his vehicle and leaving Sethi lying on the ground, the court heard.
Paramedics rushed Sethi to hospital, where he died of a stab wound to an artery feeding his heart.
The accused later sent a Snapchat message to a friend reading, “Bro, I just shanked the kid in the parking lot. You gonna have to meet me later or smt, bro. I gotta hide out,” the court heard. Police later found Sethi’s blood on the accused’s clothing and a knife.
According to a psychiatrist’s report, the offender said the incident was meant to be self-defence, and that Sethi “didn’t deserve to lose his life.”
The offender’s flight from the scene of the stabbing and the fact that Sethi was not armed at the time were aggravating factors in the killing, Crown prosecutor Catherine Rose told the court.
Mitigating factors include his early guilty plea and the fact that he did not instigate the confrontation.
Prosecutors acknowledged that there was an element of panic in the offender’s actions and that Sethi, who was larger, approached him in a threatening manner with several other people.
The Crown is seeking a sentence of two years of house arrest.
The defence has yet to make its submissions, and the sentencing hearing has been put over to a future date.