Court of Appeal dismisses convicted murderer’s application

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The Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed an application by Jorden Larocque-Laplante, who was convicted of second-degree murder for the “horrible and senseless” killing of 20-year-old Carleton University student Abdullah Al-Tutunji in 2016.

Larocque-Laplante was convicted by a jury in 2019 of the racially motivated and intoxicated knife attack outside a McDonald’s on Meadowlands Drive on December 11, 2016.

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The three-judge panel rejected his appeal, which was filed in February on the grounds that the trial judge had improperly instructed the jury on the legal principles of provocation and self-defense.

Al-Tutunji was an environmental engineering student at Carleton. He was minding his own business when Larocque-Laplante walked into McDonald’s after a night of heavy drinking. He began shouting Arabic names and mocking the victim and his friend.

Al-Tutunji and his friend had just received their takeout and were heading home. He dismissed the annoying drunk and told him, “Shut the fuck up.”

That unleashed the killer, who chased both men outside and challenged them to a fight.

According to the appeals court case summary, a fight broke out involving punching, pulling, pushing, kneeing and grabbing, and all three men threw punches.

Larocque-Laplante fell while backing away and the two men continued to hit him while he was on the ground, according to the summary.

The appeal alleged that Al-Tutunji kicked Larocque-Laplante in the face while he was on the ground.

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That was not captured on the security video and no one saw how Larocque-Laplante ended up with injuries to his face.

The fight had ended and the two men were walking away when Larocque-Laplante pulled out a knife and attacked Al-Tutunji.

He “lunged” at Al-Tutunji and stabbed him in the chest, then ran after his friend, according to the case summary.

He soon returned and stabbed Al-Tutunji, who was kneeling in the parking lot, then stabbed him again several times after the victim collapsed to the ground.

Al-Tutunji was stabbed nine times, including six fatal wounds to the torso.

Larocque-Laplante took the stand in his own defense at trial, telling the jury that he was completely drunk that night and could not remember anything about the murder.

He tried to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, saying he was too drunk to intend to kill, but the Crown rejected the offer and took the second-degree murder case to trial.

Crown lawyers Mark Moors and Robert Thomson established that the killer had been able to walk, talk, text, fight, kill and seek medical treatment afterwards while in his so-called drunken stage.

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Larocque-Laplante’s defense attorney suggested at the time that his client might file an appeal.

According to the appeal, filed by Mark Halfyard five years after the guilty verdict, Larocque-Laplante also “advanced the partial defense of provocation.”

“He claimed that once he was on the ground, the fight was over. The deceased attacked him with a kick to the face and this caused him to react suddenly.”

The trial judge, Catherine Aitken, a High Court judge, concluded that “there was an air of reality” to the partial defense of provocation and put this to the jury in her final instructions in 2019.

The provocation defense was called “dubious at best” in the Court of Appeals decision, released last week, which noted that the trial judge “gave (Larocque-Laplante) the benefit” of an instruction to the jury on the legal principles of provocation.

According to the decision, Larocque-Laplante’s appeal “ignores the fact that the clear words of the Penal Code define what provocation is.”

The judge’s instructions to the jury in 2019 were “correct and responsive to the issues raised by the evidence,” according to the decision, and the appeal was dismissed by the panel of Judge Michal Fairburn, Judge David H. Doherty and Judge Mary Lou Benotto.

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