Man pleads guilty in killing of Prabhjot Singh Katri

A Nova Scotia man has pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing Prabhjot Singh Katri, the 23-year-old man who came to the province from India five years ago.
Cameron James Prosper of the Pictou Landing First Nation was originally charged with second-degree murder in the September 2021 death of Katri, a member of the Sikh community in Truro, N.S.
On Dec. 19, the 21-year-old accused pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Truro.
Prosper stabbed Katri in the neck at 2:04 a.m. on Sept. 5, 2021, according to an outline of the facts read aloud at the hearing by prosecutor Thomas Kayter. Katri was leaving a friend’s apartment at 494 Robie St. in Truro when he was killed. 
Katri came to Canada from India in 2017 to study, and was 23 when he died. At the time of his death, his friends told CBC News that Katri had completed his studies and was working as a taxi driver on a work visa while applying for permanent residency in Canada.
According to the preliminary agreed statement of facts, Prosper was drinking in the parking lot of a Robie Street apartment building with Dylan Robert MacDonald,. Katri was inside the building visiting some friends at about 2:30 a.m.
When Katri left the building and was walking to his car, Prosper stabbed Katri in the neck. with a folding hunting knife. He then fled in a white car with MacDonald driving. Police located the car at one point later in the morning, but it fled at speeds approaching 200 km/h and the officers lost sight of the vehicle.
Katri ran back to his friends’ apartment for help. When police arrived, his friends had a cloth over the wound to try to stop the bleeding, and he was lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
Katri was pronounced dead at the Colchester Regional Hospital shortly after 3 a.m. He had bled heavily from a 4-cm wound.
Kayter said with only one wound, “it’s very hard to prove the intent to kill absent other factors, which were utterly absent in this case.”
He said there was no history of animosity between the two men, or even any indication they knew each other.
He said it was a “spontaneous event… there is absolutely nothing between these two parties before the moment they came in contact. Nothing.”
While there was community speculation at the time, there was no evidence that the incident was motivated by hate or ethnic animosity, Kayter said.
Prosper, who had originally pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, is scheduled to be sentenced May 12.