Alok Gupta had volunteered to work a shift at Ken’s Grocery, in Surrey’s Royal Heights neighbourhood, as a favour to another clerk so she could see a movie with a friend. He had been in Canada on a student visa and was enrolled in the marketing and business management program at Surrey’s Kwantlen Polytechnic, maintaining a 3.86 grade point average. In India, he’d already earned an MBA and a degree in mechanical engineering. Gupta was shot dead by Langthorne’s partner-in-crime William Andrew Whiteside, who sentenced in 2013 to 15 years and one month in prison for killing Gupta in 2011.
NEW WESTMINSTER —Prolific criminal Ian Clifford Langthorne, who robbed Indian Convenience Store employee Alok Gupta, who was shot dead by Langthorne’s partner-in-crime, Surrey resident William Andrew Whiteside, has been sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, less credit for time served, for his role in the robbery which turned fatal and a separate robbery and carjacking that happened a couple weeks after Gupta was robbed and killed.
Justice Janice Dillon, in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, sentenced Langthorne, 30, after he pleaded guilty to robbing Gupta on Christmas Day, 2011 and kidnapping Nathaniel Wall on Jan. 12, 2012, reported the Surrey Now newspaper.
After receiving credit for time served, Langthorne’s remaining sentence to be served is five years and 30 days.
“Langthorne still is at high risk to re-offend and poses a substantial risk to the public,” the judge noted.
Whiteside, 25, was sentenced in 2013 to 15 years and one month in prison for killing Gupta in 2011, after pleading guilty to manslaughter and robbery. He’d originally been charged with second-degree murder.
“I did not mean to kill Mr. Gupta and I am very remorseful for it,” Whiteside told Judge Jim Jardine during his sentencing hearing in Surrey provincial court.
Whiteside claimed he had no idea why the gun went off.
Gupta, 28, had volunteered to work a shift at Ken’s Grocery, in Surrey’s Royal Heights neighbourhood, as a favour to another clerk so she could see a movie with a friend. He had been in Canada on a student visa and was enrolled in the marketing and business management program at Surrey’s Kwantlen Polytechnic, maintaining a 3.86 grade point average. In India, he’d already earned an MBA and a degree in mechanical engineering.
Half an hour before he was killed, Gupta had been chatting online with his mom and dad in India, and they were teasing him that he should get married before turning 30. He was their only son.
