The Alberta man convicted of the Nov. 6, 2017 killing Abbotsford police Const. John Davidson has been sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole for 25 years.
The sentence was handed down to Oscar Arfmann in a New Westminster court on Monday.
The sentencing hearing included emotional victim impact statements from Davidson’s wife and three children.
“The first thing I see when I wake up is John falling to the ground face first,” Davidson’s wife Denise said. “I can’t imagine the feeling of intense pain riveting through his chest… Desperately hoping he didn’t remain conscious enough to feel the pain.
“I will love him for the rest of his life and hate Oscar Arfmann who ended his life,” she added.
“I still have no idea how to live when my goal is just to survive every day… I have even considered if the kids are better off without me.”
Following the hearing, Abbotsford Police Chief Mike Serr read a statement on behalf of the Davidson family thanking supporters and praising the sentence.
“Based on the hard evidence, the judge has put Oscar Arfmann behind bars for life for murdering a wonderful husband and father,” said the statement.
“This won’t alleviate our struggles in the future, but anything less would have been unjust and an insult to John’s memory.”
Serr added that Nov. 6 will always remain a difficult day for his department, but thanked Abbotsford officers for their response the day of the shooting, and other police agencies and first responders for their help in the aftermath.
“I am so incredibly proud of the men and women of the Abbotsford police department on that day, when we had the call of shots being fired in that parking lot that our men and women raced to that scene,” he said.
In January, a judge upheld the guilty verdict and rejected a hearing to determine Arfmann’s mental fitness at the time of the murder.
A psychiatrist said Arfmann was psychotic at the time of the murder but was capable of understanding his actions.
Arfmann faced an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
— With files from Grace Ke and Sean Boynton