A man has been found guilty of manslaughter but cleared of murder in a 2023 stabbing outside a Vancouver coffee shop of a father who whose death was captured on video and shared widely online.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker says that after looking at the cumulative factors that contributed to the death of Paul Schmidt outside the Starbucks where he was stabbed six times, she could not be certain that Inderdeep Singh Gosal had the intent required for a second-degree murder conviction.
Schmidt had been pushing his daughter in a stroller before he was stabbed.
Gosal watched from the prisoner box, dressed in a blue sweater on Wednesday, as Ker read her lengthy ruling describing the 90-second interaction between the two men, which started as a verbal argument and ended with a 28-second physical altercation and Schmidt’s death.
Ker says Schmidt was the initial aggressor and that video showed Gosal assuming a defensive stance and only opening the knife after Schmidt threw a punch.
She says Gosal experienced “a moment of panic” and a “fear for his life” during the sudden altercation, on top of being mildly intoxicated and having a mental health disorder.
Each of those factors alone was not enough for a successful defence but they cumulatively contributed to her ruling, she said.
Gosal’s lawyers had argued in the judge-alone trial that a manslaughter conviction was more appropriate, saying the attack involved “overreaction due to mental illness” rather than a “deliberate intent to kill.”
But Crown prosecutors said they had established Gosal knew his actions could have resulted in Schmidt’s death.
CCTV footage played in court in February showed Schmidt approach Gosal, who was smoking something near the Starbucks entrance.
The court heard Gosal has schizophrenia and he testified he had stopped taking his medication about three months before the killing, and believed a knife he said he found in an alley was a “sign from God” he needed to protect himself.
But the Crown cited several instances of Gosal changing his story, including about buying the knife, exaggerating to police how much alcohol he consumed and presenting psychiatrists with self-serving depictions of his psychological state.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 2, 2026.
By Ashley Joannou | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
