PAIN OF SENSELESS LOSS
Kobra Mohammadi, right, and Mohammad Rashidi, the mother and brother of Maryam Rashidi — the gas station attendant killed while trying to prevent a $113 gas theft in 2015 — react to news on Wednesday the woman’s killer was sentenced to 11 years in jail.
As Maryam Rashidi’s mother sobbed in court, the man who killed the Calgary gas-station attendant in a hit-and-run was handed an 11year prison sentence Wednesday.
While Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Alan Macleod noted Joshua Mitchell’s remorse in running down Rashidi as she tried to stop him from driving away without paying for gasoline at the 16th Avenue N.W. Centex station where she worked, he said the offender could have chosen to stop before the fatal injuries were inflicted.
“There was no intent to kill but the risks were patently obvious . . . it had to be obvious,” said Macleod, who noted Mitchell’s young age of 20 at the time of the June 7, 2015, incident.
Moments earlier, Mitchell apologized to Rashidi’s family.
“If I could take it back, I would, and exchange places with Ms. Rashidi, I would,” he said.
Mitchell was also given a lifetime driving prohibition.
Earlier, during sentencing submissions, court heard a written statement from the dead husband of Rashidi, which expressed a deep sense of loss and guilt in allowing his wife to work at the service station where she was killed.
Ahmed Nourani Shallo, who was killed in a highway accident last June while travelling from Vancouver to Calgary to mark the second anniversary of his wife’s death, spoke of her family’s resentment against him over his wife’s job.
“’Why did you let Maryam work in a gas station?’” Shallo said of his in-laws’ sentiments in a statement read by Crown prosecutor James Thomas.
“I was silent on the phone knowing that the family of my wife believe I was responsible.”
Station attendant Rashidi, 35, pursued Mitchell after he began driving away with a full tank of stolen gas worth $113 at the Centex station where she’d just recently begun working.
She jumped on the stolen Ford F350’s hood, but fell under its wheels after Mitchell dislodged her.
Mitchell, now 22, was initially charged with second-degree murder but was convicted of the lesser offence of manslaughter.
Shallo said he moved to Vancouver with their son, Koorosh, following Rashidi’s death, but his family pleaded with him to return to his homeland of Iran.
In his statement, the man said he’d brought his family to Canada at the urging of his wife for better opportunities for their son, and resolved to stay even after the tragedy.
“It’s what Maryam would have wanted and I pray to her every day to give me strength to give Koorosh the future we dreamed about,” he wrote.
In sentencing submissions, the Crown argued for a 12-year sentence minus credit for time already served, which would amount to three years and four months.
They also called for a lifetime driving prohibition.
“The gravity of the offences are very high indeed, and the consequences enormous,” said Thomas.
“There’s no mistaking the sensation of a truck travelling over Ms. Rashidi’s body … the fact he ran over her with both tires, there was an opportunity to stop.”
Just before the sentencing hearing, Rashidi’s mother and brother, Mohamad, arrived in Calgary from Iran, with the sibling’s victim-impact statement also read in court.
Their mother, he wrote, suffered two heart attacks and family members suffered deep depression since the death of a woman he described as brilliant and gentle.
“She was so kind and never hurt the tiniest creature in her life,” he wrote.
The photos of his sister “looking like a rag doll” after the crime left him feeling “a deep depression inside of me.”
Defence lawyer Kim Ross argued for a seven to eight-year sentence and a driving prohibition of five to seven years.
He said the crime wasn’t planned but rather one of a panicked young man who’s now full of remorse.
“There was no evidence he drove directly at her … it was spontaneous,” Ross told court.