After the eldest daughter fled, the father turned his attention back to his 38-year-old wife of 13 years.
He attacked her a second time, returned to his own front yard, and then attacked her a third time on the front porch yelling over and over, “I’ll kill you and I love you”.
Police arrived and disarmed the man. Attempts were made to save his wife, but she died on the spot.
Officers discovered their six-year-old daughter in the home with three stab wounds. She was taken to hospital and operated on, but died the next day.
The man pleaded guilty to two counts of murder after admitting to police what he had done.
His wife had called the police earlier in the day about her husband’s drug use. He was paranoid and kept talking about his family being kidnapped.
Justice Hollingworth said the man was not motivated by ill will towards his family.
“On the contrary — you loved them and wanted to protect them from what, in your irrational psychotic state, you perceived as a threat of kidnapping or murder by someone else,” she said.
He had a history of drug use and was hospitalized in April 2021 for increasingly erratic behavior in the context of methamphetamine use.
Justice Hollingworth said the man was clearly upset when he spoke to police and psychiatrists about what had happened and said in a letter to the court he was ready to be punished.
He also apologized to his wife’s parents, his parents and his surviving daughter.
“I did something wrong to you and your mother and sister. Please forgive me,” he wrote.
“Your father is still a good man and loves you very much. Always be a good girl, like you always were.
His lawyer said the man’s greatest punishment was his own self-inflicted loss of his precious family.
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