A B.C. man convicted of first-degree murder was sentenced to life in prison, plus another 14 years for attempted murder on Wednesday.
Brandon Teixeira was convicted last August of murder, attempted murder and discharging a firearm with intent in the October 2017 shooting death of Nicholas Khabra in Surrey and the attempted killing of another person, known as person A.
“I can’t find that beyond a reasonable doubt that there was preplanning to specifically shoot and kill person A,” Justice Jennifer Duncan said in court on Wednesday.
“She was the unfortunate victim and that she was by no fault of her own or of Mr Khabra’s in the wrong place at the wrong time and she will forever bear those consequences.”
Charges were laid against Teixeira in 2018, but he had fled to the U.S. and was arrested in Oroville, Calif., on Dec. 1, 2019.
He was extradited back to Canada in April 2020.
At trial, jurors heard that Teixeira had shot and stabbed Khabra in a targeted hit, with a contract worth $160,000.
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Crown prosecutor Dianne Wiedemann told the 14-person jury that Teixeira had accepted the “contract to kill” because he believed Khabra had set him up in a drive-by shooting several days prior.
The court heard that on the night of the killing, Teixeira pulled a gun from his waistband and shot Khabra four or five times, then pursued him to the front door of a house where he stabbed him multiple times.
The high-security trial heard graphic testimony from a witness known only as “Person X,” an alleged accomplice in the slaying who testified that he “froze” when the moment came to pull the trigger.
Teixeira’s lawyer challenged Person X’s credibility, stressing how the witness — a criminal with $50,000 in debt — had cut deals with both the RCMP and the Crown.
His agreement to work as a police informant netted him half a million dollars, while his deal with prosecutors saw him plead guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, for which he served a five-year sentence.
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