Valentine’s Day shooting plotter appeals
HALIFAX — An American woman who plotted to go on a Valentine’s Day shooting spree at a Halifax mall is appealing her sentence of life in prison, calling it “manifestly harsh and excessive.”
Lindsay Souvannarath was sentenced in April after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in a plan that would have seen two shooters open fire at the Halifax Shopping Centre food court in 2015. A motion to set a date for the appeal hearing is expected to be considered next week by Justice David Farrar of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.
In her notice of appeal, Souvannarath, 26, argues that her sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 10 years should be revised to a fixed sentence of 12 to 14 years.
Souvannarath, from Chicago, provides five grounds for appeal, including suggesting that the presiding judge committed an error by imposing a burden on her to prove she was remorseful and had “renounced anti-social beliefs.”
Souvannarath pleaded guilty last year, several months after Randall Shepherd — a Halifax man described in court as the “cheerleader” of the foiled plot — was sentenced to a decade in jail.
A third alleged conspirator, 19-year-old James Gamble, was found dead in his home a day before the planned attack, after police surrounded the Halifax property.