By Riverdale actor Ryan Grantham has been jailed for life after admitting he shot his mum dead while she played the piano.
The 24-year-old Canadian actor, known for his role in the popular teen series as well as parts in shows such as Supernatural and iZombie, went on trial earlier this year accused of fatally shooting his mother, Barbara Waite, in the head.
At the trial it was also revealed that Grantham had also planned to kill Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. After pleading guilty, Grantham was charged with second-degree murder for killing Waite. Crown prosecutor Michaela Donnelly said: “He put the crosshairs on the back of her head, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.”
He drove around 200 kilometres east to the town of Hope before turning around, contemplating committing a mass shooting at Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge or at Simon Fraser University, where he had been a student. Instead, he drove to a police station in Vancouver where he told an officer: “I killed my mother.”
Grantham had considered shooting his mother several times before the sentencing because he didn’t want her to find out about his poor school performance and marijuana use. The court heard that after shooting her, he covered his mother with a sheet and went out to buy beer.
In one of the videos taken after the killing, he filmed his mother’s body while saying: “I shot her in the back of the head. In the moments after, she would have known it was me.” Grantham then spent the hours after the murder smoking marijuana, drinking beer, and trying to make molotov cocktails.
At trial, Grantham’s sister described the murder of their mother as “cold-blooded.”
“Words cannot express how horrific and gut-wrenching this has been to go through,” Lisa Grantham told the judge. “How can I trust anybody when my only sibling chose to execute my mom when her back was turned?”
Image: PopBuzz
