A jury has found Randy Tshilumba, 27, guilty of first-degree murder in the 2016 stabbing death of a supermarket cashier — the same verdict handed down in his first murder trial back in 2017.
In April 2016, Tshilumba repeatedly stabbed 20-year-old Clémence Beaulieu-Patry in broad daylight at the Maxi grocery store where she worked, in Montreal’s Saint-Michel neighbourhood.
Tshilumba pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, but the prosecution and the defence both agreed that he stabbed Beaulieu-Patry. Tshilumba’s lawyers argued that he was not criminally responsible for the death.
The jury’s guilty verdict came Monday after three days of deliberations.
In his first trial in 2017, Tshilumba was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for 25 years.
Tshilumba, 19 at the time of his arrest, admitted to killing Beaulieu-Patry, saying he acted in self-defence because he believed the woman and four of her friends had been plotting to kill him for more than a year before the stabbing.
Tshilumba’s defence lawyer had argued his client should not be found criminally responsible because of mental illness.
In a judgment rendered in November 2022, Quebec’s Court of Appeal overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial, saying the judge in the first had given the jury instructions that were “unduly long, unnecessarily complex but above all manifestly contradictory and prejudicial.”