Brandon Nathan Teixeira – the subject of an intensive manhunt in connection with a 2017 South Surrey killing – will return to Canada to face multiple charges, including first-degree murder.
READ MORE: Fugitive in South Surrey murder arrested in California: IHIT
Teixeira, who was arrested in California in December, submitted to extradition during court proceedings Thursday afternoon in Sacramento, Lauren Horwood, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s office, confirmed.
“The next step is to send (the extradition request) to the U.S. State Department for approval, which could take up to 60 days. Teixeira will be held in custody until he is transferred to Canadian custody.”
Teixeira is charged with first-degree murder in the Oct. 23, 2017 shooting death of Nicholas Khabra in the 14300-block of Crescent Road in South Surrey. He is also charged with attempted murder and discharging a firearm with intent to wound or disfigure, in connection with an offence on the same date, which U.S. court documents obtained in December state relate to the shooting of Khabra’s girlfriend.
READ MORE: Man killed, woman in serious condition following South Surrey double shooting
Khabra’s death, the same documents note, was motivated by revenge and an alleged $160,000 bounty.
A ‘memorandum in support of extradition’ filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in California describes a total of eight charges stemming from three separate incidents that occurred between 2015 and 2017. In addition to the charges connected to South Surrey, Teixeira is wanted for trial on attempted murder, two counts of aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and uttering threats.
The additional charges, according to the court document, are related to an incident in June 2016, in which a bouncer at a bar in Surrey suffered multiple stab wounds, and one in August 2015, in which two people suffered stab wounds in an incident at a Maple Ridge public house.
Following Teixeira’s “dynamic” arrest at a home in Oroville, Calif. – U.S. officials at the time described violent efforts to elude capture, including the ramming of an armoured vehicle – Canadian authorities submitted a formal request for his extradition on Jan. 21.
According to the U.S. court document, the crimes which Teixeira is accused of, if committed in the U.S., come with maximum penalties ranging from four years’ imprisonment to life in jail.
In Canada, a conviction of first-degree murder comes with a mandatory life sentence.
Canada’s evidence, the court document submits, “establish probable cause that Teixeira committed the eight offenses for which extradition is sought.”
The determination of probable cause, the document adds, is “not a finding of fact.” It “serves only the narrow function of indicating those items of submitted evidence on which the decision to certify extradition is based.”
Horwood noted that Teixeira’s case is one of two involving Canadians who are currently in federal custody in Sacramento awaiting extradition. They are also the first two such defendants in her 12 years with the U.S. Attorney’s office, she said.
The second, according to the Sacramento Bee, involves a man arrested Wednesday (Feb. 26), who is alleged to have stolen the identity of two-and-a-half-year-old American boy, Thomas Carl Coy – who died in July 1949.
Jean-Paul Halleux escaped from a prison in Manitoba in 1973, while serving a two-year sentence for break-and-enter, the Bee states, adding his history with the name Coy appears to begin in 1977.
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