Yosef Gopaul pleads guilty in beating death of Surrey, B.C. hockey mom

"A rock the size of a grapefruit was found near her body."

"Gopaul, 28, also pleaded guilty on Friday to an unrelated robbery two weeks before attacking Paskall."

""When asked how hard he threw the rock he answered, 'Hard enough to knock her out,' which is all he wanted to do,"' said Crown lawyer Wendy Stephen, reading from a statement of facts."

"Stephen told the court that Gopaul has 29 criminal convictions going back to age 16 and that six of those were violent crimes, including assault with a weapon."

26 convictions, 6 violent, and now only 12 years for murder, meaning he'll be out in 6.

Sickening.

Poor lady. She was just going to pick up her kid after a hockey game and she meets this predator who thinks a good robbery technique would be to find a woman and throw a big rock into her face.

He should never get out.

For the record: Statutory release is actually after 2/3rds....so it would be 8 years actually (assuming he's not deemed a risk to the community and kept for the full term).

For the record: Statutory release is actually after 2/3rds....so it would be 8 years actually (assuming he's not deemed a risk to the community and kept for the full term).

How could he honestly be looked at as "no risk" with his record.

For the record: Statutory release is actually after 2/3rds....so it would be 8 years actually (assuming he's not deemed a risk to the community and kept for the full term).

How could he honestly be looked at as "no risk" with his record.


How could he be looked as "no risk" 20 convictions ago ?

Yep, he's a risk alright. Having 3 men break in and rape your mother, who jumps out an 11th story window to escape them, becoming permanently disabled, will do that to you. As will the family not receiving any support after that incident. I'm sure it saved some money at the time, but what was the cost down the road in dollars, never mind the cost in a life? So let's keep on voting Conservative for harsher penalties after a monster like this is created, instead of being there to help while he's growing up. If we can just punish these guys enough, it will stop this sort of crime. After all, that's been the story in the US, so we should definitely be copying them.

Mandatory minimums for any criminal who lives in Surrey...

The way our justice system works he probably got 10 years for the robbery and only 2 years for the murder....excuse me ... manslaughter....

He was charged with second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter......how the Hell did he manage to cut a deal having the murder charges reduced to manslaughter in the first place....

How do you prove intent to kill? She didn't die right away and had a heart condition that played a role. He hit her once, not repeatedly. But mostly he pled guilty.

It was the heart attack that killed her actually not head injury from the rock. I don't believe there was intent to kill.

That said, you hit someone in the head with a rock and perhaps it could be argued that a reasonable person could expect a likelihood of death. Just like if you only mean to shoot someone in the arm but miss and blow their brains out by accident, you'll probably still get murder because you should have known that was a likely outcome. If this lady had died from head injury he probably would have gotten murder charges.

So, once again the perpetrator is actually be the victim here.

But allow me propose this question. Since there have literally been thousands of people throughout history who have watched their mothers get raped and or murdered but didn't go out and start committing crimes and murdering people like this asshole did, why is he so special?

People make choices, and this guy made a conscious decision to become a criminal which led to him becoming a murdered and any apologist tripe about how rough his childhood was is just and excuse to explain away a ridiculously lenient sentence that's about 12 years to fucking short.

I don't see where anyone is saying he should receive leniency, just observation on Cause and Effect, and if you want to reduce the Effect then you should address the Cause.

Likelihood of conviction is the way the prosecution put it which really means that they couldn't be bothered to put the time or effort into trying to make a murder charge stick. But what I really find disgusting is the fact that the victim having an illness can now be used an excuse to change a murder charge to manslaughter? Murder is murder and just because you were ill doesn't mean your life means less than a healthy person.

Or does it?

But since she was going to die anyway maybe this guy was just getting a jump on the new euthanasia laws as defined by the Supreme Court of Canada.