B.C.’s Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of a man convicted of two counts of manslaughter where the deaths occurred during a September 2016 targeted kidnapping for ransom.
Matthew Stewart and five co-accused — Harinam Cox, Shamil Ali, Gopal Figueredo, Erlan Acosta and Ellwood Bradbury — were found guilty of seven indictable offences arising out of a targeted kidnapping for ransom, including two counts of manslaughter.
Appeal Court Justice Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten said H.C. was forcefully taken from his Vancouver home by masked men and transported to Surrey.
B.C. Supreme Court trial judge Arne Silverman said H.C. ran an illegal drug business out of his home. He lived there with his girlfriend, a roommate, sometimes two small children, and Cox, who also worked for H.C. in his drug business.
On the evening the offences started, H.C. had a meeting at home with Cox and Figueredo, who also sometimes worked for him.
The manslaughter victims — the girlfriend and roommate — arrived unexpectedly while the abduction was in progress.
H.C. saw them from a stairway when he realized there were three or four masked men around him. The court heard he was punched in the face, his arms tied behind his back, and was thrown down the stairs from where he heard four pops that he thought were gunshots.
“Both his girlfriend and roommate had been shot twice in the side of the head from close range,” Silverman said. “It is not known who the shooter was and the gun was never located.”
Writing for the unanimous, three-judge court, DeWitt-Van Oosten said a young child was with them, but left physically unharmed.
The Crown was not able to prove how many people were in the house at the time of the shootings, who they all were, or who pulled the trigger. After H.C. was abducted, he was confined for about 45 hours until police rescued him.
“The kidnappers attempted to sever one of his fingers with bolt cutters and a blow torch. They made ransom demands,” the court heard.
Stewart argued at trial that if the evidence didn’t prove he was involved in the kidnapping until after the abduction, he could not be found criminally culpable for the killings.
DeWitt-Van Oosten said Stewart didn’t challenge his kidnapping, unlawful confinement, extortion or aggravated assault convictions.
However, he did argue on appeal that direct and circumstantial evidence at the trial didn’t support convictions for manslaughter and the verdicts are unreasonable.
He asked those convictions be set aside and acquittals entered. Alternatively, he sought a new trial on the manslaughter counts.
DeWitt-Van Oosten said it was open to Stewart to appeal the manslaughter convictions but added that she found Silverman had not made the errors Stewart alleged.
She said she agreed with the Crown that Stewart’s argument on appeal largely “repeats arguments made and lost at trial.”
