A West Vancouver man who shot and killed his business partner outside their British Properties mansion, then cut up his body with a saw into over 100 pieces, should be sentenced to between 12 and 14 years in jail, a Crown prosecutor told a B.C. Supreme Court justice on Friday.
Crown counsel Adrienne Lee told Justice Terrence Schultes the jail term was needed to show public denunciation of the horrifying crime committed by Li Zhao, 60, five years ago in West Vancouver.
In January, Schultes found Zhao guilty of manslaughter in the death of 42-year-old Gang Yuan, a prominent and wealthy businessman with interests in both Vancouver and China.
Zhao was originally charged with second-degree murder in the case.
But Schultes said he was left with a reasonable doubt that Zhao intended to kill Yuan during a violent altercation that broke out between the two men at their shared residence on May 2, 2015.
Schultes found that Yuan was shot twice at close range by Zhao with a small-calibre .17 rifle in the driveway of their home at 963 King George's Way, after an earlier fight involving a hammer inside the mansion. An autopsy found Yuan died of a gunshot wound to the neck.
Schultes also found Zhao guilty of interfering with human remains for cutting up Yuan's body with a reciprocating saw inside the mansion's garage.
Lee described the killing as a tragic case, made particularly serious by the use of a gun.
She said the fact Yuan had already been struck with a hammer and was in a “compromised and vulnerable state” when he was shot was an aggravating factor in the case.
Zhao was not suffering from any mental illness at the time he committed the crimes, said Lee.
The way he cut up Yuan’s body afterwards was particularly horrifying, said Lee, and “went well beyond the desire to just destroy the evidence.”
Two of the women Yuan had had children with wrote victim impact statements for the court, with one describing losing “the love of my life” and saying her daughter has had nightmares and has cried for her daddy in her sleep.
Yuan’s mother also wrote a statement, saying since her son’s killing, “I’ve experienced tremendous pain beyond anyone’s imagination. A mother who has lost her son in such a horrendous manner, that he was cut into pieces and disposed of like garbage – anyone who has children should understand how painful this is.”
Zhao’s defence lawyer Ian Donaldson called for a more lenient sentence, pointing out that his client has already spent over five years in pre-trial custody – equal to about eight years of regular jail time.
Donaldson urged the judge to impose a sentence of time already served plus probation. He said the “upper end” of sentences that should be considered is two additional years in jail plus probation.
Zhao is now 60 and was a completely non-violent person prior to Yuan’s killing, said Donaldson.
During the trial, court heard the two men got into a violent altercation after Yuan made a business proposition to Zhao that included allowing Yuan to marry Zhao's daughter, Florence.
At the time, Florence Zhao, who was in her 20s, was starring in the Vancouver-based reality TV series Ultra Rich Asian Girls, and the mansion where Yuan, Zhao and their extended families lived had been featured in the series.
When Yuan suggested wanting to marry Zhao's daughter, Zhao first told him, "This is a bad joke," according to his videotaped statement to police, later telling him, "You're not a person. You're a beast."
During the trial, Zhao described how the two men struggled in the foyer of the mansion, fighting over a hammer, then in the driveway of the mansion, before he opened fire with a rifle.
"I was scared. I opened fire," Zhao said in his police statement. "I was scared. I shot the second time."
Schultes is expected to hand down his sentence in October.
