B.C. man set out to assassinate Trudeau

A former child actor killed his mother and planned to drive across the country to assassinate the prime minister, the B.C. Supreme Court heard on Tuesday.

Ryan Grantham, 24, confessed to shooting Barbara Waite, 64, in the back of the head in their Squamish, B.C., townhouse in March 2020 while she was playing the piano.

“He put the crosshairs on the back of her head, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger,” Crown prosecutor Michaela Donnelly said,

Grantham pleaded guilty to second degree murder, which carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

The day after the murder, while his mother still lay in a pool of blood, Grantham loaded his car with three guns, 12 Molotov cocktails, camping supplies and a map with driving directions to Rideau Cottage in Ottawa, according to the CBC.

Donnelly, presenting two psychiatric reports, told the court Grantham was suffering a major depressive episode and had experienced suicidal and homicidal ideations. She said he wanted to kill his mother to spare her from learning about the violence he intended to commit against Justin Trudeau.

“Mr. Grantham was seeking to save his mother from something he was going to do,” Donnelly told the court, the CBC reported. “That is something different than altruism.”

Prosecutors say he was increasingly plagued by self-loathing and guilt about his mother learning that he stopped attending Simon Fraser University.

“Barbara Waite loved her son very much, was an excellent parent and in her mind had no reason to fear him,” said Donnelly.

She said Grantham's use of a gun should factor in the sentence, noting his recent purchase of a firearm despite being aware of his violent urges.

He also recorded a Gopro video of himself doing a practice run for the crime on at least one occasion, by walking up to his mother with a gun in secret, the court heard. Before he left the house, Grantham wrote in his journal and took a video showing his mother's dead body. “I shot her in the back of the head,” he says in the recording. “In the moments after, she would have known it was me.”

He embarked on a 50-hour drive to Ottawa to kill Trudeau. When he reached Hope, about two hours away, he turned his car around, with thoughts of carrying out a mass shooting at Lions Gate Bridge or at Simon Fraser University. Instead, Grantham drove to Vancouver later that night and turned himself in to a police officer sitting in his patrol car. He told the officer: “I killed my mother.”

Grantham began his acting career while in elementary school, appearing in a fried chicken commercial before landing roles in TV shows and movies.