A Surrey woman has lost her appeal court bid to overturn her 12-year prison sentence for attempted murder related to an online feud between her and another woman that led to her attacking the other woman with a knife and hammer in a Vancouver courtroom in 2021.
Qin Shen was convicted in 2023 of attempted murder following her attack on Jing Lu, a woman she’d been feuding with for nearly two decades. Shen challenged the sentence in the Court of Appeal for British Columbia, arguing the sentencing judge failed to consider the extent to which her “intense animus” towards Lu resulted from mental illness and that her sentence should be reduced to six years.
Justice Gail Dickson dismissed her appeal, with Justices Karen Horsman and Lisa Warren concurring, finding the judge made no error.
“The judge was in the best position to evaluate the evidence. I see no error in her assessment of Ms. Shen’s moral blameworthiness or the conclusion that she drew,” Dickson found.
Dickson in her October 20 reasons for judgment delivered in Vancouver noted that Shen met Lu online in 2005 on a website designed to help Chinese immigrants connect in Canada.
“They became entangled in an intense online feud in which they repeatedly posted insults and personal attacks on one another,” Dickson noted.
Lu sued Shen for defamation in 2016 and Shen countersued. Both were found liable for defamation. Shen was ordered to pay $9,000 in damages and Lu was ordered to pay $8,500.
Before that judgment was released Shen was found guilty of contempt of court for breaching an order that prohibited her from posting about Lu online and she was ordered to pay Lu $2,000.
Dickson noted Shen was “deeply disappointed” with the judgments. Both sides appealed and while these were pending Lu filed another contempt application against Shen, which, at Shen’s request, was set for a hearing on May 25, 2021, where the attack happened.
The court heard Shen took “preparatory steps, including arming herself with a knife and hammer, drinking alcohol to bolster her courage, bringing a suitcase with her to court to either take to jail or flee after the attack, and dressing all in red to disguise the red blood stains.”
While both parties were waiting for the judge, Shen attacked Lu from behind, Dickson noted, “pummelling her with a hammer and stabbing her with a very sharp and narrow knife. Ms. Shen inflicted at least ten knife stabs and hammer blows to Ms. Lu before a sheriff entered the courtroom and intervened, likely saving Ms. Lu’s life in doing so.”
Shen was 53 at the time, had no criminal record and had immigrated to Canada with her husband and son in 2005. She has an engineering degree from China.
“At the time of the attack, Ms. Shen was living in Surrey and rarely leaving her home. Based on the psychiatric evidence presented at trial, the judge found that she suffered from depression, anxiety and mild alcohol-use disorder when she attacked Ms. Lu,” Dickson noted.
The Crown had argued for a sentence of 16 to 18 years in prison while the defence argued for six years.