Killer who stabbed dad to death in front of his toddler cleared of murder after lawyers blame his mental illness

A psychotic, drug-smoking man who stabbed a father to death in front of his wife and their 3-year-old daughter has dodged murder charges after his lawyers blamed his mental illness for the savage attack.Inderdeep Singh Gosal, 34, stabbed Paul Schmidt, 37, six times in a 28-second, caught-on-camera March 2023 attack when the defensive dad asked him to stop smoking weed in front of his family outside a Starbucks in Vancouver, Canada.Gosal was charged with second-degree murder for the crime that BC Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker described as “shocking, violent and traumatic.”But he was convicted Wednesday on a lesser charge of manslaughter after his legal team called the deadly attack an “overreaction due to mental illness” rather than a “deliberate attempt to kill,” according to CBC.Gosal had testified that he has schizophrenia and suffers from psychotic symptoms and delusions, but had stopped taking his medication around three months before the deadly confrontation, CTV News also reported.He claimed he found the weapon in an alley as a “sign from God” that he needed to defend himself.However, prosecutors raised several discrepancies in Gosal’s story, including that he had actually purchased the blade and exaggerated to cops about how much alcohol he drank the day of the attack.Gosal had been smoking a joint on the patio of the Starbucks while Schmidt, who had his daughter in a stroller, yelled at him and eventually confronted him physically, shoving him to the ground.Gosal then pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed Schmidt six times in the neck and torso in a confrontation that lasted just 28 seconds.“I did it.He came after me,” Gosal immediately said, according to a responding Vancouver cop.The judge noted that the killer’s evidence was “all over the proverbial map” — but said widely circulated CCTV footage suggested the dad was the primary aggressor in the confrontation.She said the slain father had overpowered Gosal until h...