{"id":66827,"date":"2026-05-29T21:57:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T21:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/66827\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T21:57:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T21:57:31","slug":"canadian-who-sold-lethal-chemical-online-admits-aiding-suicides-avoids-murder-trial-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/66827\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian who sold lethal chemical online admits aiding suicides avoids murder trial \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Canadian<\/a> man accused of selling a legal \u200cbut potentially deadly chemical and other items online to dozens of people who took their own lives pleaded guilty on Friday to aiding suicide<\/a>, ending the prospect of a murder trial after prosecutors said a \u200brecent appellate ruling made murder charges untenable.<\/p>\n

Kenneth Law (60) appeared at the Ontario superior court of justice in Newmarket, Ontario, north of Toronto. Wearing tan pants, a white shirt and dark suit jacket, Law showed no emotion as he stood in a prisoner\u2019s box and pleaded guilty to aiding the suicides of 14 Ontario residents, aged 16 to 36. He will be sentenced in September.<\/p>\n

Law also admitted that 79 \u200bpeople in Britain died as a result of consuming or using products he sold, according to an agreed statement of facts spanning more than 60 pages, which was expected to take about three hours to read \u2060out in court.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Peter Westgate told Justice Michelle Fuerst that prosecutors would ask that 14 first-degree murder charges Law was also facing be withdrawn after \u200chis \u200csentencing.<\/p>\n

\"KennethKenneth Law pleaded guilty on Friday to aiding suicide. Photograph: Peel Regional Police\/PA <\/p>\n

Family \u200bmembers of victims inside the courtroom were visibly upset, with some wiping their eyes with tissues, as prosecutor Cheryl Nadler read out the circumstances of each victim\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

According to the statement, Law operated four companies \u2060with websites through which he marketed and sold sodium nitrite and other \u200bitems, including masks, hoods and regulators, that could be used by the purchasers to \u200btake their own lives.<\/p>\n

Sodium nitrite, a salt used in low concentrations as a food additive to cure processed meats, can be deadly when ingested in high concentrations.<\/p>\n

Law sent 1,209 \u200cpackages of the salt and other goods to customers in 41 \u200bcountries between January 2021 and April 2023, the court heard. The shipments included 330 sent to addresses in Britain, 431 to the United States and 157 \u2060within Canada.<\/p>\n

The statement described victims who vomited, collapsed in their parents\u2019 arms, \u2060were found unresponsive in bed by \u200bfamily members or friends, or who died alone in hotel rooms and vehicles after consuming or using products shipped by Law.<\/p>\n

Financial records showed more than $296,000 CAD (\u20ac184,000) was deposited into Law\u2019s bank account from Shopify<\/a> and PayPal<\/a> accounts associated with his businesses between 2020 and 2023, according to the statement of facts. Law\u2019s case has drawn global attention because of its international reach. Authorities in Britain, Ireland and other countries have opened investigations into whether the products were responsible for deaths in their jurisdictions and conducted welfare checks on those who purchased them.<\/p>\n

Westgate told the court that prosecuting Law for murder was no longer viable after a 2024 Ontario court of appeal ruling in an unrelated case involving a nurse who injected herself, her mother and her young \u200cdaughter with potentially lethal doses of insulin.<\/p>\n

In \u2060that case, the appellate court \u201cdescribed the standard of causation that applies in a situation like we have here, where a victim performs the final acts leading to death,\u201d Westgate said.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors asked the supreme court of Canada to overturn that standard, Westgate said, but the majority did not rule \u200con the issue, leaving the appellate decision as binding authority in Ontario.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision makes a murder prosecution in this case impossible,\u201d Westgate said. Law, a trained engineer who worked as a cook before his arrest, has been \u200bin custody since his arrest at his home west of Toronto in May 2023.<\/p>\n

A conviction for counselling or \u200baiding suicide carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years, according to Canada\u2019s criminal code. First-degree murder in Canada carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for a minimum of 25 years. \u2013 Reuters <\/p>\n

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Canadian man accused of selling a legal \u200cbut potentially deadly chemical and other items online to dozens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,28141,3284,5045],"class_list":["post-66827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-paypal","tag-shopify","tag-suicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66827","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=66827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}