Man who slit victim's throat in Nanaimo mall parking lot gets 7 years

A man who pleaded guilty to manslaughter after slitting another man’s throat in the parking lot of a mall in Nanaimo, B.C., last year has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

A man who pleaded guilty to manslaughter after slitting another man’s throat in the parking lot of a mall in Nanaimo, B.C., last year has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

The court heard Sean Patterson fatally stabbed Serguei Chliakhov on Jan. 22, 2023 outside Port Place Mall. Patterson’s sentence was handed down in the B.C. Supreme Court in Nanaimo on June 5 and Justice Douglas W. Thompson’s reasons were published online Monday.

The judge read a summarized version of an agreed statement of facts that detail how the crime unfolded that night.

He said Chliakhov was selling drugs in the parking lot the night he was killed. Meanwhile, Patterson and another man—who had both been using methamphetamine and drinking alcohol—arrived in the area after dinner together.

Patterson went into a casino at 6:55 p.m. and was denied entry because he would not allow security to search his bag. The security guard described Patterson to police as being “aggressive and on edge” that night, and recalled hearing a clinking sound in his bag.

Then Patterson met up with Chliakhov, and the two were captured on security camera video walking down a vehicle ramp toward the mall parking lot at about 6:58 p.m. The pair disappeared out of view and four seconds later, Chliakhov is seen again, wounded, running toward the mall entrance. Patterson ran away in another direction.

“Bystanders saw Mr. Chliakhov holding his throat. He was bleeding,” the decision reads. They helped him get inside the mall and someone called 911.