Listen to this article
Estimated 4 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
A man who fatally stabbed a teenager on a Surrey, B.C., bus in April 2023 was sentenced to eight years in prison after previously being found guilty of manslaughter.
Kaiden Mintenko was found guilty last year in the killing on April 11, 2023, of a 17-year-old youth on the 503 bus near Surrey Central station.
The victim’s name is protected under a court-ordered publication ban, but he died in hospital after being stabbed once through the chest by Mintenko, the court heard.
With credit for time served, Mintenko will serve three years, four months and 18 days in prison.
The Burnaby man was initially charged with the more serious offence of second-degree murder, which would have carried a life sentence if he was found guilty.
But last year, Supreme Court Justice Terry Schultes told the court that he had decided to downgrade the original charge because there was a reasonable doubt that Mintenko had the required intent necessary to be found guilty of second-degree murder.
In giving Mintenko a prison sentence, Schultes wrote in his sentencing decision that the man poses a high risk to commit further acts of violence.
“He is not safe to be at large in the community at this point, and needs to remain incapacitated from any repetition of the current offence for a substantial period,” the justice wrote.
‘Watch your back’
In the decision, Schultes described in detail video evidence that shows the victim, a 17-year-old boy, standing at the front of the 503 bus at 9:21 p.m. on April 11, 2023, as it came to a stop in the 9900-block of King George Boulevard.
In the video, Mintenko approaches the victim from behind and punches him in the head six times. The teen falls to the floor of the bus and is seen taking a defensive position with his arms out, yelling out for help.
Mintenko is heard saying, “Watch your back,” as he pulls out a 25-centimetre-long blade, described by a witness to the court as something similar to a chef’s knife, and stabs the teen once in the right side of his chest.
The teen starts bleeding profusely.
He was declared dead about one hour later at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster.
From start to finish, the assault and stabbing took a total of six seconds, according to Schultes.
Mintenko departed the bus through the front exit doors immediately afterward.
He was arrested and charged six days later. The court heard that he had been drinking before the killing, and was with a female friend who had previously been hostile to the victim on a number of occasions.
Justice Terry Schultes heard from family members of the teenage victim, who said the killing was sudden and senseless. (Justine Beaulieu-Poudrier/Radio-Canada)
Schultes heard from family members and friends of the victim, who described struggling to understand the “sudden and senseless circumstances” that led to the killing.
“Not surprisingly, the effects on [the victim’s] mother have been particularly severe,” Schultes wrote.
“She described having in effect died herself as a result of the loss of her son, and of simply going through the motions of living in order to care for her other children, while looking forward to her own actual death so that she can join him.”
The justice wrote that Mintenko was a “time bomb waiting to go off” at the time of the killing, but that he seemed receptive to therapy and counselling programs that he would receive in prison.
In addition to being prohibited from possessing weapons, he was also asked to submit DNA as part of the sentence.