{"id":193561,"date":"2026-09-02T23:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T23:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/193561\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T23:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T23:33:08","slug":"accused-in-vancouver-starbucks-stabbing-found-guilty-of-manslaughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/193561\/","title":{"rendered":"Accused in Vancouver Starbucks stabbing found guilty of manslaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

WARNING: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence.<\/p>\n

A man has been found guilty of manslaughter in a killing outside a Vancouver coffee shop in March 2023.<\/p>\n

Inderdeep Singh Gosal had been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Paul Schmidt outside a Starbucks where he was stabbed six times in an attack captured on video and shared widely online.<\/p>\n

Justice Kathleen Ker described the incident as “shocking, violent and traumatic.”<\/p>\n

She said Gosal had been sitting on the Starbucks patio smoking a joint. Schmidt, who had been pushing his daughter in a stroller, started yelling at Gosal for smoking before advancing on him physically and throwing him to the ground, she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A memorial to Paul Schmidt is pictured near Granville and Pender in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia on Wednesday, March 29, 2023. (Ben Nelms\/CBC)<\/p>\n

The altercation was witnessed by more than a dozen people and cellphone video of it was shared widely on social media. It was also recorded by a number of CCTV security cameras.<\/p>\n

Gosal pleaded not guilty in February to second-degree murder.<\/p>\n

Gosal’s lawyers had argued in the judge-alone trial in B.C. Supreme Court that a manslaughter conviction was more appropriate, saying the attack involved “overreaction due to mental illness” rather than a “deliberate intent to kill.”<\/p>\n

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.\u2028<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Emergency<\/p>\n

Emergency personnel worked to save Paul Schmidt after he was stabbed. (Nick Logan\/CBC)<\/p>\n

In her decision, Ker said evidence presented at trial, especially the CCTV footage, showed clearly that it was Schmidt who was the initial aggressor in the confrontation.<\/p>\n

She said Schmidt had the upper hand in the fight until Gosal started stabbing Schmidt with a knife he had taken out of his pocket. The entire physical confrontation lasted only 28 seconds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WARNING: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence. A man has been found guilty of manslaughter in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[60782,60780,60783,60781,60779,60784,95],"class_list":["post-193561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-cctv","tag-gosal","tag-ker","tag-paul-schmidt","tag-schmidt","tag-starbucks","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}