British Columbia Supreme Court has sentenced Canadian actor Ryan Grantham to life in prison after pleading guilty to murdering his mother, Barbara Waite, in 2020.
Gatekeepers News reports that the 24-year-old, who played Jeffery Augustine in teen drama Riverdale, was sentenced in Vancouver on Wednesday.
Grantham pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, after having initially been charged with first-degree murder.
Prosecutors stated that the actor had also plotted to kill Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.
In the court, Grantham admitted to shooting his mother in the back of the head as she played piano in their home, north of Vancouver.
“I killed my mother,” he said.
In a video taken on his Go-Pro camera after the killing, the actor filmed his mother’s body while saying, “I shot her in the back of the head. In the moments after, she would have known it was me.”
Following the murder, the actor after drinking beer and smoking marijuana for hours packed a car with three guns, ammunition and 12 Molotov cocktails he had made, as well as camping supplies and directions to Trudeau’s Rideau Cottage residence.
Grantham drove roughly 200 kilometres east to the town of Hope, before turning around and driving to a Vancouver police station, where he told an officer: “I killed my mother.”
The court also heard that the former child actor had considered committing an act of mass violence at Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge or at Simon Fraser University, where he had been a student, en route before turning his car around and handing himself in.
Grantham appeared in one episode of the CW network show Riverdale in 2019, and also featured in the fantasy drama Supernatural, as well the 2010 film Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
Law enforcement officials in Vancouver told Deadline that he has been in custody for the past two and a half years, and has been participating in a mental health program since his arrest.
During the trial, his legal counselors argued he had been struggling with anxiety and clinical depression and had expressed a desire to kill himself and harm others in the months leading up to him killing his mother.
Grantham will not be eligible for parole for the first 14 years of his life sentence.
