Dwight Kematch was sentenced in B.C. Supreme Court on Jan. 16, 2026, to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 13 years for the January 2024 murder of Alexander Lo. Kematch told the court the Lapu Lapu festival attack carried out months later by Lo’s brother was a “ripple effect” of his crime.
‘A ripple effect from what I did’
Kematch pleaded guilty in July to second-degree murder in the killing of Alexander Lo, 31, at Kematch’s Vancouver home on Jan. 28, 2024. The two men had met that night through the dating app Grindr. An agreed statement of facts described an intoxicated Kematch attacking Lo — who was smaller and lighter — first with his fists, then a hammer and a knife, as Kematch’s sister and brother-in-law tried to intervene. Lo died at the scene of multiple sharp and blunt force injuries.
At the sentencing hearing in Vancouver, Kematch addressed the court. “I deeply apologize for what I’ve done,” he said. “I understand the causal effect about what later transpired. It was a horrendous tragedy and was a ripple effect from what I did.”
He was speaking of April 26, 2025, when Alexander Lo’s younger brother, Adam Kai-Ji Lo, allegedly drove an SUV through the crowd at Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu Day festival, killing 11 people. Adam Kai-Ji Lo, who attended the sentencing by video, is charged with 11 counts of second-degree murder and 31 counts of attempted murder. He has not stood trial; his next court appearance was scheduled for Feb. 11.
A family’s cascading grief
Crown prosecutor Mark Mhyre read a victim impact statement from the brothers’ mother, Lisa Lo, who raised her sons as a single mother. She described severe physical and emotional trauma after Alexander’s death, including a suicide attempt that left her in a two-week coma while Adam stayed by her hospital bed. She has since been diagnosed with depression, is unable to work and told the court her vision is blurred from crying. “Because of the offender’s actions, our family has been plunged into endless sorrow,” her statement said.
Alexander Lo’s friend Richard Hesketh remembered a man “full of energy” who worked in the arts. “When you murdered Alex, you took away from so many others someone who was this one-of-a-kind burst of energy,” he told Kematch directly.
A joint submission, accepted
Crown and defence jointly proposed the sentence: life imprisonment with 13 years of parole ineligibility. Mhyre called the murder “absolutely brutal” and Kematch “a clearly dangerous man,” citing earlier convictions — theft, arson and killing animals — and materials describing a long-standing fascination with killing. But he also described a life shaped by colonial policies: addiction in his family, foster care and abuse, and 20 years without a criminal offence before the murder.
Defence lawyer Jim Heller said Kematch’s guilty plea was part of his rehabilitation. Justice F. Matthew Kirchner called the case “truly horrifying” but found “real elements of humanity and hope for rehabilitation” in the plea and Kematch’s words to the court. He imposed the joint sentence, a lifetime firearms prohibition, a DNA order and no-contact orders protecting Lisa Lo and Kematch’s sister and brother-in-law.
How the sentence works
Second-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence in Canada; the judge’s discretion is the parole ineligibility period, set between 10 and 25 years. Kirchner set it at 13 — but the clock runs from Kematch’s arrest in January 2024, not from sentencing day. That means the two years he has spent in custody count toward the period, and his first eligibility to apply for parole falls roughly 11 years from now. Eligibility is only permission to apply; release remains the parole board’s decision, and a life sentence means lifetime supervision if he is ever released.
