{"id":655872,"date":"2026-05-08T11:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/655872\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T11:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:33:13","slug":"b-c-court-to-rule-in-abbotsford-home-invasion-double-murder-trial-winnipeg-free-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/655872\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. court to rule in Abbotsford home invasion double murder trial \u2013 Winnipeg Free Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

ABBOTSFORD \u2013 A B.C. Supreme Court judge is expected to deliver her verdict today in the first-degree murder trial of three young men accused of killing an Abbotsford, B.C., couple during a home invasion in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The court earlier heard that 77-year-old Arnold De Jong died by asphyxiation, with his entire head and face wrapped in duct tape, while 76-year-old Joanne De Jong was bludgeoned and had her throat slashed.<\/p>\n

Abhijeet Singh, Gurkaran Singh and Khushveer Toor pleaded not guilty earlier this year.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Arnold
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tArnold and Joanne De Jong are shown in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Handout – Helen Leusink (Mandatory Credit)<\/p>\n

The three men, all in their 20s, were arrested in December 2022, after the De Jongs\u2019 bodies were found in their Abbotsford home that May.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say the suspects had done cleaning work there before the home invasion, and that the men killed the couple before stealing cheques, credit cards and a power washer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The court heard during the judge-alone trial that one of the accused accessed news articles about the killings, and conducted \u201cexceptionally damning\u201d Google searches about the punishment for murder in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Defence lawyers argued that the evidence doesn\u2019t prove the killings were planned, telling the judge it was a \u201cbotched robbery,\u201d and the highest available verdict in the case would be manslaughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ABBOTSFORD \u2013 A B.C. Supreme Court judge is expected to deliver her verdict today in the first-degree murder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-655872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}