Canada Valentine's Day Massacre Plotter Gets 10 Years

OTTAWA, , (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Nov, 2016 ) - A Canadian man was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday for plotting to massacre shoppers at a mall in the port city of Halifax, home to the nation's Atlantic fleet.

Randall Shepherd, 21, described by the defense as a disenfranchised youth, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. "I'm deeply sorry this has happened," he reportedly told the Nova Scotia court.

A spokesperson for the Crown told AFP the prosecution and defense jointly recommended to the judge a 10-year sentence. American alleged co-conspirator Lindsay Souvannarath, 24, meanwhile, still faces prosecution in the plot.

Her case is scheduled to go to trial in May. The Crown said the pair along with a third man, James Gamble, 19, who was found dead in his home on the eve of the would-be attack, planned to shoot shoppers and throw Molotov cocktails at storefronts at the Halifax Shopping Centre on Valentine's Day 2015.

Acting on a tip, Police arrested Shepherd and Souvannarath at the Halifax airport and foiled the plot. Shepherd was picking up Souvannarath, who had arrived on a flight from her hometown of Geneva, Illinois.

The two young men had met in high school. They bonded over "heavy metal music, gore/horror movies, marijuana and a shared fascination with death and morbidity, including school shootings and mass murders," said an agreed statement of facts. Souvannarath, after starting an online relationship with Gamble, also expressed an interest in "school shootings and Nazism."