A West Vancouver man who fatally shot his wife’s cousin then chopped up the man’s body with a saw into over 100 pieces will spend another two years and four months in jail for his crimes.
Li Zhao, 60, was handed the sentence in B.C. Supreme Court Monday morning by Justice Terence Schultes, who said Zhao bears a high moral responsibility for his actions.
The jail time is on top of the five years and five months Zhao has already spent in custody following his arrest in May 2015.
Schultes said if not for the time Zhao has already spent in jail, he would have received a sentence of 10 years and six months for his crimes.
In January, Schultes found Zhao guilty of manslaughter and interfering with human remains in the death of 42-year-old Gang Yuan, a prominent and wealthy businessman with interests in Vancouver and China, who was both a business associate and relative of Zhao’s.
Zhao was originally charged with second-degree murder in the case.
But Schultes said he was left with a reasonable doubt that Zhao intended to kill Yuan during a violent altercation that broke out between the two men at their shared residence on May 2, 2015.
Schultes found that Yuan was shot twice at close range by Zhao with a small-calibre .17 rifle in the driveway of their home at 963 King Georges Way after an earlier fight involving a hammer inside the mansion. An autopsy found Yuan died of a gunshot wound to the neck.
Schultes also found Zhao guilty of interfering with human remains for cutting up Yuan's body with a reciprocating saw inside the mansion's garage.
At an earlier sentencing hearing, Crown counsel Adrienne Lee asked Schultes for a jail term of 12 to 14 years, arguing the sentence was needed to show public denunciation for the crimes.
Zhao’s defence lawyer Ian Donaldson called for a more lenient sentence, urging the judge to impose a sentence of between time already served and two additional years in jail plus probation.
During the trial, court heard the two men got into a violent altercation after Yuan made a business proposition to Zhao that included allowing Yuan to marry Zhao's daughter, Florence.
At the time, Florence Zhao, who was in her 20s, was starring in the Vancouver-based reality TV series Ultra Rich Asian Girls, and the mansion where Yuan, Zhao and their extended families lived had been featured in the series.
When Yuan suggested wanting to marry Zhao's daughter, Zhao described the plan as “incestuous” in nature and Yuan “like a beast," said Schultes.
During the trial, Zhao described how the two men struggled in the foyer of the mansion, fighting over a hammer, then in the driveway of the mansion, before he opened fire, shooting Yuan twice with a rifle.
Schultes recalled how Zhao described the events during the trial:
“After I opened fire and saw his wide eyes, once I did this, I didn’t know, I thought he was going to get up and hit me so I fired another shot,” he said.
In handing down his sentence, Schultes agreed that there were aggravating circumstances in the case including the fact Yuan – who was “quite seriously injured already” and lying on the driveway – was no longer a “meaningful threat” at the point Zhao shot him.
Schultes described the steps taken by Zhao to load and fire two shots as further aggravating factors.
The way Zhao chopped up Yuan’s body spoke of a “clinical and dispassionate coldness,” said Schultes, which resulted in the “obliterating of Mr. Yuan’s body as an intact entity.”
Schultes added that while the circumstances surrounding Zhao’s actions of cutting up Yuan’s body were “unquestionably bizarre”, psychological assessments had found “no indication of a major mental illness or personality disorder.”
Schultes added he accepted defence submissions that Zhao had expressed genuine remorse for his actions and had no history of violence.
Schultes added Zhao’s previous good reputation in community, as well as that of his wife, had been “vaporized” by his crimes.
