Lawyer says client didn’t try to kill Vancouver café patron. Crown calls accused liar

VANCOUVER — The judge in the murder trial of a man who stabbed a Vancouver café patron to death has been presented with two views of the suspect — as someone unable to understand the consequences of his actions due to an “unmedicated psychotic state,” and as a liar whose own accounts of his mental state couldn’t be relied upon.

Inderdeep Singh Gosal pleaded not guilty in February to second-degree murder in the death of Paul Schmidt on a Starbucks patio more than three years ago, which was captured on video and widely shared on social media.

Defence lawyer Gloria Ng argued on Tuesday during closing remarks that her client should instead be found guilty of manslaughter, saying Gosal’s actions were an “overreaction due to mental illness” rather than a “deliberate intent to kill,” on March 26, 2023.

She said he did not have the foresight needed to conclude that the bodily harm he inflicted was likely to cause death.

“Rather, Mr. Gosal’s conduct is consistent with the actions of a person whose perception of reality and appreciation of consequences were profoundly distorted by an untreated mental illness,” she told her client’s judge-alone trial.

But a prosecutor said later that the Crown had established Gosal knew his actions could have resulted in Schmidt’s death.

Karin Blok depicted Gosal as an unreliable narrator of his mental faculties, saying he exaggerated to police how much alcohol he had consumed, changed his story about buying the knife to one of finding it in an alley in a “sign from God,” and presenting psychiatrists with self-serving depictions of his psychological state.

Blok told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker that Gosal is “neither a credible nor reliable witness.”

“His evidence should not be accepted by this court. It cannot raise reasonable doubt,” Blok said, adding that the “only credible evidence before the court is the evidence contained in the videos and the testimony of the eyewitnesses to the incident.”

Gosal appeared at the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on Tuesday wearing a blue sweater over a white collared shirt.

CCTV footage played in court in February showed a verbal confrontation that turned physical when Schmidt approached Gosal, who was smoking something near the Starbucks entrance.

The altercation left Schmidt lying in a pool of blood after Gosal stabbed him six times in the chest.

The trial heard that Gosal suffers schizophrenia and he testified that he had stopped taking his medication about three months before the killing. He testified that he felt threatened during the incident but did not intend to kill Schmidt.

Ng summarized the evidence of two forensic psychiatrists, Dr. Johann Brink and Dr. Rakesh Lamba, saying Brink concluded that Gosal’s actions were an overreaction caused by anxiety, fear and a “complex interplay of factors rather than purely psychosis.”

Ng said Brink also testified that Gosal’s inability to remember some details of the event “supports the psychiatric explanation of the overreaction.”

She said Lamba concluded Gosal’s mental disorder was active at the time of the offence, but disagreed that it impaired him from having foresight into his actions.

Ng called that opinion “problematic” and said the totality of evidence — including Gosal’s unmedicated psychotic state, his paranoia and fear, schizophrenia, and the potential for psychosis to “blur awareness and impair the appreciation of consequences” — presented reasonable doubt that he “possessed the subjective foresight of death required for murder.”

Ultimately, Ng said a “verdict of manslaughter is an appropriate finding.”

Blok disagreed with the defence characterization of the psychiatrists’ evidence, saying Brink relied “almost entirely” on Gosal’s self-reporting that she said was unreliable and riddled with inconsistencies.

Lamba’s opinion that Gosal was able to understand the consequences of his actions was meanwhile based around evidence including video and eyewitness testimony, Blok said.

“His opinions remained unaltered, even when (he) accepts a self-report of the accused, and that was that the accused could foresee the consequences of the action,” Blok said of Lamba’s testimony.

“In the Crown’s submission, the evidence establishes beyond the reasonable doubt that Mr. Gosal intended to cause Mr. Schmidt bodily harm that he knew it was likely to cause death and was reckless as to whether death ensued,” she said. “He should be convicted of second-degree murder as charged.”

The Crown is expected to continue its closing submissions on Wednesday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 5, 2026.

Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press