On July 1, 2018 the Kelowna RCMP received reports of a violent altercation. Police responded to the vicinity of the Queensway bus loop where they discovered 23-year-old Esa Carriere on the ground in grave condition suffering from life threatening injuries. He later succumbed to his injuries in hospital.
Image Credit: TWITTER/BCRCMP
March 09, 2021 - 2:27 PM
Noah Vaten told Mounties he remembered stabbing Esa Carriere against the backdrop of Kelowna’s 2018 Canada Day festivities but in the immediate aftermath, he regretted it and doubted what had happened was even real.
“I only remember stabbing him once, immediately regretting it and running,” he said.
“I promise you I only stabbed Esa one time. If he was stabbed more than once, it’s 100 per cent not me.”
The video interview was recorded after Vaten was arrested in January 2019, and it’s clear that Vaten was emotional and seemingly interested in coming clean for the events that rolled out months earlier.
“I did it, I deserve to be punished,” he said, while sobbing. “Well, I don’t think I deserve to spend 10 years in jail.”
The officer interviewing him then explained that a legal process would ensue and the RCMP wouldn’t have any say on how that all shook out.
“I deserve to go to jail,” Vaten then said.
In time, Vaten recaps what he remembers of the conflict with Carriere, who had been chased down by two of his friends.
“I don’t think I did a whole arm thing, I think I fell… I remember getting up and being, ‘what the fuck’ looking at the knife and saying, ‘what the fuck did I just do?’” he said. “That’s why I felt like I tripped, honestly, but I remember looking at the knife and saying, ‘what the fuck did I just do?’”
He said one of his friends was kicking Carriere in the head at that moment and someone from outside of the fray grabbed him.
That’s when he ran and at some point, took his knife and stabbed it into the ground, apparently to get rid of the evidence.
“It had blood on it, and I was scared and I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t even know if what was going on was real,” he said. “I honestly thought it was a dream. I honestly was so high, I didn’t think what was going on was real.”
He also told the interviewer that the knife RCMP found on him in the aftermath of being arrested the night of the killing, at the Rutland community policing office, for kicking windows wasn’t the knife he used to stab Carriere.
That knife, he claimed, was thrown down a storm drain somewhere between downtown Kelowna and Rutland.
Four people were charged in Carriere’s death, and a person who was a youth at the time of the incident has since pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of assault.
Nathan Truant is Vaten’s co-accused for manslaughter and another person who was a youth at the time of the death is awaiting trial.
Crown counsel Martin Nadon said in his opening statement that by relying upon witness testimony, DNA, CCTV footage from cameras across the city, as well as RCMP testimony, he intends to show that Vaten and Truant were among a group of people who fatally injured Carriere after chasing him down.
“At the end of the chase, which was near the rear of the Highway 97 bus stop, Carriere was either tripped or fell to the ground, and was then attacked by members of the group,” Nadon said. “He was punched and kicked while he was on the ground. During the attack, Mr. Carriere was stabbed once the chest and it turned out to be fatal.”
Carrier was 23 years old when he was killed. He had recently relocated to Kelowna from Mississauga, Ontario.
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