Riverdale and Diary of a Wimpy Kid actor Ryan Grantham has been sentenced to life behind bars for the 2020 killing of his mother. He will be eligible for parole in 14 years.
The by-the-book second-degree murder punishment was handed down September 21 by British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker in Vancouver. With the sentence already a forgone conclusion over the laws of the Canadian province, the only real wild card was how long the guilty-pleading Grantham, 24, would have to wait before he could apply for parole.
He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, after having initially been charged with first-degree murder.
Prosecutors said he had also plotted to kill Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.
Grantham admitted to shooting his mother in the back of the head as she played piano in their home, north of Vancouver, the court heard.
‘I shot & killed my mother’
He is reported to have bluntly declared to police at the front desk of the station.
In a video taken on his Go-Pro camera after the killing, the actor filmed his mother’s body while saying: “I shot her in the back of the head. In the moments after, she would have known it was me.”
After drinking beer and smoking marijuana for hours following the murder, he packed a car with three guns, ammunition and 12 Molotov cocktails he had made, as well as camping supplies and directions to Mr Trudeau’s Rideau Cottage residence.
Back in March of this year, the multiple credit actor expressed sorrow at what he had done. “In the face of something so horrible, saying sorry seems so pointless,” Grantham told the Vancouver court and Justice Ker, reading from a sheet of paper.
“But from every fiber of my being, I am sorry.”
The court also heard Grantham had considered committing an act of mass violence at Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge or at Simon Fraser University, where he had been a student, en route before turning his car around and handing himself in. During the trial, his lawyers argued he had been struggling with anxiety and clinical depression and had expressed a desire to kill himself and harm others in the months leading up to him killing his mother.
He will not be eligible for parole for the first 14 years of his life sentence.