The third member of the trio involved in a botched robbery that started in Calgary and ended on a remote rural road near the Springbank airport four years ago was found guilty of manslaughter today in Calgary Court of King’s Bench.
Uber driver Kasif Hirani was taken in his own vehicle from a Calgary residence and fatally stabbed before being left in a snowy ditch in the early hours of Dec.29, 2019.
As the sun rose later that morning, Daryl Johannesen was walking his two yellow labs along a road near the airport when he spotted Virani’s body in a snowbank. He initially thought it might have been a moose or deer carcass.
After a lengthy recap of the events in, including the details surrounding Daignault’s arrest, Justice Eleanor Funk said everything Robert Daignault did was consistent with a man who had killed someone, rather than just robbed them.
Daignault, now 56, smiled briefly when brought into the courtroom, but remained stoic throughout Justice Funk’s lengthy retelling of all the circumstances going back four years.
During Daignault’s trial Court heard that Hirani was stabbed 30 times.
Crown prosecutor Britta Kristensen, who had asked for the downgrade to manslaughter from murder last year, said outside the courtroom Wednesday that the verdict was never a sure thing.
“It was a very challenging case. It was before the courts for four years,” she said.
She added that all the other justice system personnel involved in gathering evidence did a lot of hard work.
The two star witnesses in Daignault’s case, Trista Tinkler and Andrew Christal, were previously convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six and eight years respectively.
Cristal testified that it was Daignault that stabbed the victim.
The sentencing hearing for Daignault is set for Feb.7 at 1 pm in Calgary.
