Three Indian-origin persons have been found guilty for the first-degree murder of a Canadian couple in Abbotsford in 2022, a Canada court ruled on Friday.
Arnold and Joanne De Jong were found dead in their home in Arcadian Way, a rural area in the city on the South-Western part of the country on May 9, 2022, CBC News reported.
British Columbia Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Gurkaran Singh, Abhijeet Singh and Khushveer Toor played a willing and integral role in the couple’s murder.
The court agreed with prosecutors that the murders were financially motivated and rejected defence arguments that the deaths resulted from a robbery that went wrong.
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“I find each accused was a willing, knowledgeable and integral participant in the murders,” Justice Brenda Brown said in the judgement. The court will announce the quantum of punishment on May 28.
What the Indian-origin persons have been accused of?
In 2022, the Canadian couple — 77-year-old Arnold De Jong and 76-year-old Joanne De Jong — were found dead in separate bedrooms, with Arnold’s head and face wrapped in duct tape while Joanne was found with blood around her.
While Arnold died of asphyxiation, with his head and face wrapped in duct tape, his wife had her throat slit. Both their hands and feet were also bound with rope. The three accused, in their 20s, had pleaded not guilty.
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The prosecutors presented circumstantial evidence linking the three accused to the killings, including DNA recovered from the crime scene, rope allegedly used to tie up Arnold and a metal baseball bat recovered from the suspects’ vehicle.
The three convicts worked for a cleaning company owned by Abhijeet Singh, which had done work at the couples’ home on more than one occasion.
The prosecutors told the court the three men had done cleaning work before the home invasion and killed the couple before stealing their credit cards, cheques and a power washer.
The court was also presented with evidence suggesting that the accused accessed searched on the internet about the killings and punishment for murder in Canada.
However, the defence lawyers said that the evidence doesn’t prove the killings were planned and argued that it was a “botched robbery”.
