2 weeks ago
Swift News
A Surrey woman has lost her appeal court bid to overturn her 12-year prison sentence for attempted murder related to an online feud between her and another woman that led to her attacking the other woman with a knife and hammer in a Vancouver courtroom in 2021. Qin Shen was convicted in 2023 of attempted murder following her attack on Jing Lu, a woman she’d been feuding with for nearly two decades. Shen challenged the sentence in the Court of Appeal for British Columbia, arguing the sentencing judge failed to consider the extent to which her “intense animus” towards Lu resulted from mental illness and that her sentence should be reduced to six years. Justice Gail Dickson dismissed her appeal, with Justices Karen Horsman and Lisa Warren concurring, finding the judge made no error.
“The judge was in the best position to evaluate the evidence. I see no error in her assessment of Ms. Shen’s moral blameworthiness or the conclusion that she drew,” Dickson found. Dickson in her October 20 reasons for judgment delivered in Vancouver noted that Shen met Lu online in 2005 on a website designed to help Chinese immigrants connect in Canada. “They became entangled in an intense online feud in which they repeatedly posted insults and personal attacks on one another,” Dickson noted.
Lu sued Shen for defamation in 2016 and Shen countersued. Both were found liable for defamation. Shen was ordered to pay $9,000 in damages and Lu was ordered to pay $8,500. Before that judgment was released Shen was found guilty of contempt of court for breaching an order that prohibited her from posting about Lu online and she was ordered to pay Lu $2,000. Dickson noted Shen was “deeply disappointed” with the judgments. Both sides appealed and while these were pending Lu filed another contempt application against Shen, which, at Shen’s request, was set for a hearing on May 25, 2021, where the attack happened.