Kathy Michaels
Black Press
The man convicted earlier this year in the brutal slaying of an Armstrong teenager appears to be attempting to overturn his conviction.
An application was filed with the Court of Appeal on behalf of Matthew Foerster Sept. 3, said a representative from the court. It’s early on in the process and no other materials have been filed, so the grounds on which Foerster will pursue the appeal are unknown at this time.
In April a five-woman, seven-man pool of jurors returned to a Kelowna courtroom, unanimous in a guilty verdict on the charge of first degree murder after just over 24 hours of deliberation.
To have reached that decision they had to conclude that Foerster, 28, was intending to sexually assault Taylor Van Diest, 18, when he fatally injured her on a set of secluded train tracks Halloween night 2011.
His lawyer had unsuccessfully hypothesized he was just trying to woo the teen, and had pushed her over with fatal consequences when she spurned his advances.
When Foerster was asked by Justice Peter Rogers if he had anything to say following the jury’s decision, defence lawyer Lisa Helps declined on his behalf.
It was the teen’s fight for survival that ultimately convicted Foerster, said Crown Counsel in his closing arguments. Despite the significant size difference between Van Diest and her attacker, she scratched his neck and collected the DNA that tied him to the scene.
