• Driver Profiles
Prabhjot Singh Katri Truro, Nova Scotia / September 5, 2021 Prabhjot Singh Katri came to Canada from India in 2017 as a student. Four years later, with his studies completed, he was driving a taxi on a work visa while applying for permanent residency. He shared a home with his sister and her husband.
On his way home at the end of his taxi shift on the night of September 4-5 2021 he dropped in to visit friends at an apartment on Robie Street in Truro. He left the apartment at 2 a.m., explaining that he had to be up early for his second job at a Tim Horton's.
Two young men , aged 20 and 21, were drinking outside the apartment as Mr. Katri went to his car. He was getting into it when he was attacked by the 20-year-old who stabbed him in the neck with a folding hunting knife.
Bleeding from a four-centimetre cut in his neck, Mr. Katri managed to return to the apartment where he collapsed. Meanwhile the killer escaped in a white Honda Civic driven by his companion. One of Mr. Katri's friends was able to provide police with a description of the suspects and a partial license plate number. Mr. Katri's blood was later found in the car.
Mr. Katri's friends were unable to stop the flow of blood from his neck wound. He was pronounced dead at Colchester Regional Hospital shortly after 3 a.m.
Police spotted the white Honda Civic at 3:44 a.m. and gave chase at speeds approaching 200 kilometres an hour but the killer and his accomplice escaped.
However, at about 5:20 a.m. the accomplice returned to the Robie Street address in an attempt to retrieve a backpack from an apartment that he and the killer had been visiting. Police arrested him at gunpoint after a foot chase. He was charged with being an accessory-after-the-fact to murder, dangerous driving, driving to evade police, and obstruction of justice.
The killer was already in jail since September 9 due to other charges. He was released into police custody on October 15 and charged with second-degree murder.
Prabhjot Singh Katri. (Source: Global News, May 12, 2023.)
A third man, the occupant of the apartment, was originally charged with being an accessory after the fact but the charge was dropped for lack of evidence.
On December 19, 2022 the killer pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter. On May 12, 2023 he was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Defence attorney Malcolm Jeffcock called the sentencing procedure "very complex" due to the Supreme Court of Canada's 1999 Gladue decision which requires judges to consider alternatives to incarceration when sentencing Indigenous offenders and to take into account factors such as a family history of substance abuse and intergenerational trauma from the residential school system.
Crown prosecutor Thomas Kayter said that "There's no evidence to indicate that the stabbing was motivated by ethnic hate or racism."
Mr. Katri's body was returned to India in September, 2021 and cremated. He was 23 years old at the time of his death.
