PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. — A Saskatchewan woman who stabbed her victim outside a mall where people robbed her as she lay dying has been sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for manslaughter.
Latisha Grumbo, who is 20, sat in the prisoner’s box with her head down as the decision was read out in Prince Albert Court of Queen’s Bench.
Court heard that Grumbo stabbed Kayla Aubichon once in the chest in July 2020, then walked away not realizing Aubichon would die hours later in hospital.
The 33-year-old mother of four lay on the sidewalk outside Prince Albert’s Gateway Mall for more than an hour before 911 was called.
Video footage presented in court showed a dozen people passed by, and she was robbed of her purse and headphones.
Justice Naheed Bardai said people's actions were unconscionable.
“We will never know if Miss Aubichon would have lived if she received timely medical attention," Bardai said Wednesday.
"What we know is if one of the bystanders had stopped and called for help, and if help had arrived sooner ... there is a chance that Miss Aubichon may have survived,” he said.
“A chance that a mother would not have to bury her daughter, and a chance that a seven-year-old little girl would continue to feel her mother’s warm embrace.
"It is clear that more than one life was destroyed that day.”
Bardai said manslaughter sentences vary depending on the circumstances that can include an accident as well as a death with no malice forethought.
He said Aubichon's stabbing could not "be described as mere accidental.”
Victim impact statements read in court during Grumbo’s last appearance in March included one written by Aubichon’s seven-year-old daughter. The girl described how much she missed her mother and how hard she finds Mother’s Day when all the other kids at school are making cards.
The girl also drew a picture of her last memory of her mother — lying in a coffin in a grave.
The motive for the stabbing remains unclear, although there was a suggestion in court that a debt was owed. Court also heard Grumbo was high at the time.
Bardai said he considered Grumbo’s guilty plea and expression of remorse in his sentencing decision. He said he also took into account her absence of a criminal record, the physical abuse she suffered while in foster care and exposure to drugs and alcohol in her home.
“She was never given much of a chance,” he said.
Aubichon's mother said outside court she didn't think the sentence was long enough. Sue Aubichon was also critical of the people who walked by her daughter without stopping to help.
“They should be charged, too, for just leaving her like that." (paNOW)
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 27, 2022.
Nigel Maxwell, paNOW, The Canadian Press
