Kaiden Mintenko, 21, of Burnaby has been found guilty of manslaughter in the stabbing of a 17-year-old boy on a Surrey bus on April 11, 2023.
Justice Terry Schultes delivered his verdict Thursday, March 20 in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.
He was tasked with deciding if Mintenko is guilty of second-degree murder or the lesser included crime of manslaughter following a 10-day trial that began on Dec. 2 and concluded Dec. 19. The court will reconvene on April 10 to fix a date for a sentencing hearing.
Schultes noted that Mintenko warned the teen "watch your back" just before stabbing him, suggesting he had a future encounter in mind.
"At the end of the day, the evidence that I find most informative on the issue of intent is Mr. Mintenko saying 'watch your back' just before he stabbed (the victim)."
"In an ordinary sense those wounds are prospective," the judge found 香蕉视频直播� a warning of future conduct against the victim.
Combined with "some degree" of alcohol impairment, the "dynamic circumstances although Mr. Mintenko was the creator of them," and the "extremely brief" period he had in which the required intent to commit murder would have had to have been formed, Schultes found, "I find that I'm left with a reasonable doubt.
"I must find Mr. Mintenko not guilty of murder but guilty of the included offence of manslaughter," he determined. This was met with weeping in the courtroom.
The victim was stabbed in the right upper chest while riding on a Route 503 bus in the 9900-block of King George Boulevard and died in Royal Columbian Hospital that night. Schultes imposed publication bans on information that would identify the teen and two Crown witnesses. He also ordered a publication ban on the identity of a fourth person.
Mintenko did not testify at his trial but other , including one who tried to stop the victim's bleeding with a scarf.
Crown prosecutor Rod Flannigan recalled one bus passenger saying the weapon looked like a chef's knife "for chopping," about 10 inches long and two inches wide. The bus driver, Flannigan added, "just described it as a big knife; he said it was almost a foot long."
"This was a big knife," he said.
Flannigan noted there were 37 passengers on the bus, not counting the driver. The victim was attacked while standing behind the driver. Flannigan noted much blood was spilled, dripping out the middle doors.
"What's important is this knife passed through the bone of the third rib," Flannigan said.
"This was a forceful blow."
The trial heard Mintenko wasat an early age.
A Crown witness testified that a on the bus knew the victim and would "try to egg him on" whenever they crossed paths. "There was evidence of previous hostility" from her to the victim, Schultes noted.
Flannigan during his final submissions on Dec. 19 said Mintenko is "a lot more shrewd" than his defence lawyer Mark Swartz portrayed him to be. "He is aware of the jeopardy he is in and he is willing to lie to protect himself."
"Basically our position is Mr. Mintenko was aware of what he was facing, the consequence, he initially lied to police and only started to give information as evidence was shown to him and he really didn't start to admit things until he felt he was caught, but even then he held things back," Flanagan told Schultes.
Flannigan acknowledged during his final submissions on Dec. 19 that there is a high burden on the Crown to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but it's not impossible. "Our argument is that when the court looks at the totality of the facts in this case and applies the law to them, the court can find beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Mintenko had the requisite intent for murder."
"This was not a fight, this was an unprovoked attack on a defenceless person," Flannigan said.
"He sucker-punched him and I think from watching the video (from the bus), it's hard," Flannigan said. "And he proceeded to punch him six times with a closed fist, knocking him to the floor of the bus. And then he pulls out the knife from his right side 香蕉视频直播� and you watch it on the video 香蕉视频直播� that arm goes up, and you can see it's a long knife, and it goes down, and it goes into (the victim's) chest."
"And he's not a novice with knives."
The trial heard when police searched Mintenko's bedroom they found stab holes in his wall, pillow and mattress.
"All we know is that there's a massive number of stab holes in his bedding, which the Crown says shows he is familiar with what a knife does when you stab something."
Police did not find the knife.
"Getting rid of the knife really goes to his, we say, his shrewdness, aware of the consequences," Flannigan said.
Swartz completed his final submissions on Dec. 18. During his submissions, he argued that the Crown hadn't proven its case for a murder conviction and his client should instead be found guilty of manslaughter.
"The position of the defence has been clear at the outset of these proceedings that this is not a situation that the Crown is able to prove the requisite intent for murder and the court should find Mr. Mintenko not guilty of second-degree murder but guilty of the lesser included offence of manslaughter," Swartz told Schultes.
"The requirement is the Crown must establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Mintenko either meant to cause death or he means to cause bodily harm where he knows that it's likely to cause death and is reckless whether death ensues or not."
Swartz noted the intent required for a murder conviction is that Mintenko himself had the subjective foresight that death would occur, "and it's not looked at that the accused knew it could cause death but the accused knew that the injury is likely to cause death.
"Likely to cause death is meant to convey the notion of a substantial or real chance, as distinct from a mere possibility, and that it is not sufficient for the Crown to established that the accused foresaw only a danger of death," he argued.
The trial heard that Mintenko but had also sobbed to the officers "he wasn't supposed to die, I didn't want it at all, I didn't want to kill him, I didn't want to, I wasn't trying to."
When a police officer then asked Mintenko what he thought was going to happen then, Mintenko replied, "I wasn't thinking."
"I never wanted to hurt nobody," he told police.
"I'm f---ing caught, man," Mintenko said. "There's no doubt about that."
F that a knife with a single edge was thrust 17 centimetres (6.69 inches) into the victim, through the hardest bony part of his third rib into his right lung, damaging his pulmonary artery and pulmonary vein.
Swartz noted in his final submissions that Mintenko told the police, "I just, I mean like, it wasn't supposed to go that deep either."
The defence lawyer pondered why someone who intends to kill someone with a knife on a bus would try to start a fist fight first?
He said the problem is that "if it's your intent to kill at the outset and you start with a fist fight, is that you're on a bus with a number of passengers. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that some point someone may intervene in terms of a fist fight amongst two young persons. And so your goal of carrying through with a murder is subject to failure if there's intervention."
Swartz told the judge Mintenko acted impulsively and this, along with his consumption of alcohol and marijuana, his "youthfulness whereas his frontal lobes which involve the decision-making processes are not fully developed, his reduced of maturity and lack of life experience" and Mintenko's developmental and cognitive problems should lead him to find a reasonable doubt as to his client being guilty of murder.
"This clearly was impulsive in nature, not well thought out," the defence argued.
