Man who stabbed stranger in attack at Coquitlam bus stop gets 11-year sentence

A man who attacked and stabbed a 20-year-old stranger at the Coquitlam Central Station bus loop in December 2011 has been sentenced to 11 years for the near-fatal assault plus a string of other offences.

The attack occurred after the two men disembarked from a bus in the early hours of Dec. 15. Tyrel William Scott, 41, had been sitting next to the victim, Cody Cardiff, on the bus and followed him at the stop.

Scott offered Cardiff a cigarette, then stabbed him twice in the torso, before fleeing the scene and leaving the younger man for dead. 

Provincial Court Judge Robin  McQuillan described the attack as "entirely unprovoked and apparently without any motive" in his sentencing. The two men didn't know each other.  

Cardiff, a student, had been returning home from visiting a friend.

Police found him at the bus stop bleeding and lying on the ground. He was taken to hospital with stab wounds to both his heart and liver — injuries so severe that doctors didn't expect him to survive and which caused him to go into cardiac arrest that night. 

In a victim impact statement six years later, Cardiff says he was left with significant scars as a constant reminder and ongoing nerve pain. He had to drop out of school after the attack and is "unable to trust people or to go out in public where there is a large group of strangers."

Scott was identified as a suspect in the aftermath of the assault, but police didn't have enough evidence to charge him. He confessed to the attack in 2017 during an undercover police operation. 

McQuillan sentenced Scott to six years for aggravated assault for the attack on Cardiff. He was sentenced to another five years for other offences ranging from firearms possession and possession of drugs including fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking .

'Pyscho mode' and meth

Scott, who pleaded guilty the assault and other charges, blamed his use of the drug methamphetamine for the attack. 

"He said that he had been using at the time, and when a woman on the bus had given him a strange look, which he described as a "dirty look" in the direction of Mr. Cardiff, he went into "this psycho mode" which led to him following Mr. Cardiff off the bus and stabbing him," wrote McQullian. 

"He said that after the attack, he was crying and could not understand how he could do such a thing to someone whom he did not even know."

The judge noted Scott's troubled upbringing, expressions of remorse and guilty plea in the sentencing decision.

With credit for pre-sentence custody, Scott will serve seven-and-a-half years in prison.