Father guilty of murdering daughter

A Kitimat man has been convicted of killing his teenage daughter in a fit of rage. After deliberating for five hours, a B.C. Supreme Court jury has found Rajinder Singh Atwal guilty of second-degree murder.

Amandeep Atwal

Seventeen-year-old Amandeep Atwal was stabbed to death in July 2003.

• FROM FEB. 21, 2005: Dad on trial for daughter's death

The Crown said she was murdered because her father was angry about her relationship with her boyfriend, Todd McIsaac.

The couple had become involved while attending high school together in Kitimat, and had managed to keep their relationship secret from her parents.

But her parents found out after the pair were involved in a car accident.

In the summer of 2003, Amandeep moved to Prince George to live with Todd. Then she went on one last holiday with her family to Vancouver.

Her father offered to drive her back to Prince George. It was somewhere during that trip that Amandeep was stabbed 11 times. Her father delivered her bloody body to Langley Memorial Hospital.

He told the staff she had committed suicide. But a pathologist who testified during the trial said some of the stab wounds were "inflicted after death."

The defence had argued there was reasonable doubt of guilt because there there were no witnesses, and that much of the evidence was circumstantial.

Rajinder Atwal did not testify in his own behalf, and his lawyer called no witnesses in his brief defence.

Atwal remained composed during the final stages of his trial – until the guilty verdict. He then looked at his wife in the gallery and cried briefly.

The 48-year-old Atwal faces an automatic life sentence. A hearing in June will determine when he will be eligible for parole.

His lawyer indicated he intends to appeal the verdict.