Convicted murderer wants B.C. Supreme Court to throw out case over delays

VANCOUVER — A man convicted of first-degree murder in a killing police have said was linked to organized crime has asked British Columbia Supreme Court to throw out the case, arguing that delays in the process violated his Charter rights.

Prosecutors argued that Brandon Teixeira — who was convicted by a jury of murder, attempted murder and discharging a firearm with intent to endanger life last August — was partly responsible for the delays after going on the run in the United States after fleeing police in a chase that involved a helicopter.

“You’re not allowed to abscond, evade arrest, disappear, you know, in a foreign country, with a fake name, and then have that time period count toward delay,” Crown lawyer Dianne Wiedemann said at a hearing on Monday.

Teixiera’s lawyer, Vicki Williams, told the hearing over the so-called Jordan application that apart from two periods of time, including her client’s flight to the U.S., no delays were attributable solely to his defence team.

Teixeira’s conviction came nearly eight years after the October 2017 shooting death of 28-year-old Nicholas Khabra in Surrey, B.C.

The charges and trial followed a probe by the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team and Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of B.C.

Police issued a statement at the time of Teixiera’s conviction saying an attempt had been made to arrest him after he was initially charged in 2018, but he fled to the U.S., where he was arrested in Oroville, Calif., on Dec. 1, 2019. He was extradited to Canada in April 2020 to face trial and convicted last Aug. 25.

Wiedemann described the circumstances of Teixiera’s escape from police in B.C., telling the hearing in Vancouver that two Lower Mainland emergency response teams had gone to his home in marked police vehicles.

She said Teixiera was standing on the front lawn with another man when police arrived, and the pair ran inside. With Teixiera at the doorway, she said police shouted that he was under arrest and told him to put his hands in the air.

Wiedemann said he was then shot in the leg with a less-lethal round before he closed the door, then opened it to ask why he was being arrested.

She said police told Teixiera he was being arrested for murder and he briefly closed the door again before leaving the house with his hands over his head.

“ERT members were directing him by yelling ‘walk towards the sound of my voice.’ But the applicant disregarded the commands,” Wiedemann told the hearing.

She said Teixiera moved toward his white Mercedes while police fired a non-lethal round, which missed and shattered a window, as well as two chemical rounds.

But Teixiera drove his vehicle between a parked police vehicle and a retaining wall and he was able to escape despite a chase that included a helicopter, she said.

Efforts to find him included a $55,000 reward for information offered through a partnership between police, Crime Stoppers and the Be On the Lookout program.

Wiedemann said information would then lead police to a home in the small California town where he was living under an assumed name the following year.

U.S. law enforcement officers and RCMP went to the home to arrest him, parking an armoured vehicle at one end of the driveway, the Crown lawyer said.

Teixiera stepped out the door about seven minutes after he was told to do so. He went to his car and tried to flee, but a police vehicle blocked his path, and he was eventually taken into custody with the help of a police dog, Wiedemann said.

The hearing over Teixiera’s application seeking a stay of charges is focused on whether prosecutors or his defence team were responsible for delays in the case.

Wiedemann said defence conduct constituting delay was “broad in scope,” and the case was complex enough to merit exception under the Supreme Court of Canada’s Jordan ruling, which sets time limits to ensure trials are not unreasonably delayed.

The BC Prosecution Service confirmed Teixiera was charged by direct indictment on Dec. 20, 2019, superseding an earlier provincial court information sworn in 2018.

Teixeira filed an application for a judicial stay on the basis of a breach of his right to be tried within a reasonable time last Oct. 25, the service said in an email.

If the application is not granted, a date for his sentencing hearing will be scheduled.

Teixiera appeared at Monday’s hearing before Justice Jennifer Duncan via video conference wearing orange prison garb with cropped hair, a dark beard and a sleeve of tattoos visible on one of his arms.

He paced the room at the correctional facility before sitting down when the hearing began to follow along with documents laid out on the table in front of him.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 5, 2026.

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press