An attorney for a man convicted of stabbing two high school students in Abbotsford, one fatally, stated that his client lacked the mental capacity to understand what he did was wrong. In his argument at the New Westminster B.C. Supreme Court hearing for his client, Gabriel Klein, Martin Peters stated that Klein's psychotic state caused him to believe that Klein believed he was stabbing a witch and a zombie with maggots coming out of its back, not two teenage girls. " Klein did not appreciate the nature and quality of his actions. Klein certainly did not appreciate the consequences of his actions were the fatal harm to Letisha Reimer and the maiming of (her friend)," Peters said.
On November 1, 2016, the 20-year-old Klein stole a knife and subsequently entered a high school where he saw 13-year-old Letisha Reimer and her friend who was not named by the press. He then stabbed Reimer thirteen times and seriously injured the second student. Despite his history of mental illness, Klein refused to have his psychiatric history admitted as evidence and was subsequently convicted last March of murder and attempted murder. The case has generated intense publicity across British Columbia given the brutal nature of the crime and the age of the victims who were apparently selected at random.
In a new sentencing hearing, Klein testified that hat he was following the directions of voices in his head which told him that his victims were monsters and that stabbing them was "just." He also told the court that he hadn't understand the moral consequences and had been diagnosed as psychotic during a pre-trial assessment. Despite Klein's claim of having been undergone a forensic assessment, no defense witnesses were called during the hearing. Klein has also shown significant problems recalling essential details during cross-examination and his responses have been inconsistent, something that the Crown prosecutors maintain undermined his credibility. For example, Klein that he crossed the border into Washington state two days before the attack at the school because he thought the RCMP and Hells Angels were after him, but admitted in cross examination he told border guards he had crossed by accident because he didn’t want to get in trouble. He also admitted to lying to police about having previously been robbed because he believed it might have made him more sympathetic.
Despite public interest in the case, COVID restrictions limited actual seating in the courtroom. As a result, most of the attendants watched a livestream of the hearing at a closed room in a local community centre. In a statement to CTV News, a spokesperson for Letisha Reimer’s family said that he is hoping the judge will find there’s not enough evidence to find Klein not criminally responsible for his actions. “That would be my hope, and that way it would spare the families all this sort of grief that they’re re-experiencing just after the anniversary of the murder,” he said. “At the end of the day, Letisha’s not here, and Gabriel Klein is permitted to sit on a stand and basically rewrite history of what took place. He’s introducing seemingly new information to try to minimize what he did.”
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