A Burnaby man found guilty of manslaughter in the stabbing of a 17-year-old boy on a Surrey bus on April 11, 2023 was sentenced on Tuesday to eight years in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.
But given credit for time served, at the rate of 1.5 days for every day spent in custody, his actual remaining sentence is three years, four months and 18 days.
Crown prosecutor Rod Flannigan had argued for 10 to 12 years minus pretrial custody and defence lawyer Mark Swartz argued for six and a half years. A manslaughter sentence can range from a suspended sentence to life in prison.
More than a year passed between the guilty verdict and sentencing.
“I apologize for having had to adjourn these reasons on two previous dates,” Justice Terry Schultes remarked before commencing his nearly three-hour delivery of his reasons for judgment. “I recognize the additional stress that changes dates places on everyone who is concerned with this outcome and I did not take the necessity of doing so lightly.”
Schultes delivered his manslaughter verdict against Kaiden Mintenko, now 23, on March 20, 2025. 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 in December 2024.
The victim was stabbed once 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.
Before delivering the guilty verdict, 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),” the judge decided.
“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.
Schultes noted the attack – in which Mintenko inflicted a flurry of punches on the teen before stabbing him in the crowded bus – lasted six seconds and was predicated on an “entirely false rumour” that the victim was a pedophile.
“Based on information of the most unreliable and fanciful kind,” Schultes noted, Mintenko destroyed a “completely innocent” life on a motive that was “completely disconnected from reality.”
Schultes turned to the victim impact statements he’d heard, particularly from the victim’s mother.
“She described, in effect, having died herself as a result of the loss of her son, and is 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 could join him.”
The court heard Mintenko was adopted as an infant and his birth mother was 15 when she had him. “She is understood to have engaged in substance use in the early stages of her pregnancy,” the judge noted.
The judge noted Mintenko’s cognitive deficit diminished his moral culpability “to a degree” but also said he’s not convinced “that he yet fully grasps what factors led him to the point of commiting the offence and how important it is to take all possible steps to avoid reaching such a point again.”
The court heard from an expert that Mintenko poses a high risk for future violence.
Mintenko did not testify at his trial but other passengers did, including one who tried to stop the victim’s bleeding with a scarf.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Eric Bol testified 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.
The court heard Mintenko was prepared to plead guilty to manslaughter before the trial began on Dec. 2, 2024 but the Crown rejected this to pursue a murder conviction.
Flannigan told Schultes although he found Mintenko didn’t have the specific intent to murder “there’s still evidence before the court” of purpose and planning as well as a “shrewdness” in his dealing with police.
“Situations in manslaughter, they cover a wide range of circumstances of near accident to near murder,” Flannigan noted. He said Mintenko was “looking for violence” and that this case is closer to murder than accident.
Flannigan said Mintenko committed “planned” violence against someone he didn’t know, and noted his victim was “an innocent bystander who’d done no wrong or injury to Mr. Mintenko.”
“A hefty sentence is required in this case,” he told the judge. The teen didn’t deserve to die in “such a brutal fashion,” he said, adding Mintenko deprived the teen’s family and friends “of his presence and love.”
Swartz discussed Mintenko’s “cognitive difficulties” at length, as well as him being “vulnerable” to peer suggestion, being exposed to alcohol prenatally and being someone with “a compromised mental condition” who struggles with emotional regulation and impulse control.
“He wants to become a better person, the best man he can, when he’s eventually released from custody,” Swartz told Schultes, adding Mintenko is “devastated” over what he’s done.
The defence lawyer read from several “support letters,” including one from Mintenko’s parents indicating he has since “grown emotionally with a different attitude and outlook on life” and that there’s “been some growth and maturity.”
Flannigan noted at trial 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 was fascinated with knives at an early age. A Crown witness testified during the trial that a girl who was with Mintenko 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.
The trial also heard that Mintenko admitted to police that he killed the teen 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.”