Man arrested 3 months after being charged in death of Prabhjot Singh Katri

Police in Truro, N.S., say they arrested a 22-year-old man Wednesday afternoon during a traffic stop, three months after he was charged in connection to the killing of Prabhjot Singh Katri last September.

Marcus Michael Denny of the Pictou Landing First Nation, N.S., was charged with accessory to murder after the fact on Oct. 22, 2021, but remained at large when police announced his alleged link to the case.

Katri, a 23-year-old who came to Canada from India to study in 2017, was stabbed in the neck while getting into his own vehicle outside an apartment complex at 494 Robie St. in Truro, according to search warrant documents obtained by CBC News.

There were multiple provincewide arrests issued for Denny as he is also facing charges for alleged offences in Colchester and Pictou counties between July 1 and Oct. 17 of last year. They include assault with a weapon, possession of a weapon, impaired driving, resisting arrest, obstructing a peace officer and failing to comply with a condition of a release order.

Nova Scotia RCMP asked for help locating Denny and said one of the warrants relate to an incident on July 1 when someone reported a suspected impaired driver in Bible Hill, N.S. Other charges are tied to an October incident in Pictou Landing where someone reported being attacked with bear spray.

Two other men are facing charges in relation to Katri's death.

Cameron James Prosper, 20, also of the Pictou Landing First Nation, has been charged with second-degree murder. He was taken into custody four days after the Sept. 5 killing on unrelated charges.

Dylan Robert MacDonald, 21, of Valley, N.S., was charged with accessory after the fact to murder for allegedly helping Prosper escape the crime scene. Witnesses saw two men fleeing in a car, according to search warrant documents.

None of the allegations has been tested in court.

Violent killing

Katri worked as a taxi driver and had dropped in to see a small group of friends after his shift finished, the records said. The friends later told police Katri was heading home because he had an early shift at Tim Hortons.

Police believe someone attacked him in the parking lot at 2:07 a.m. AT. Though he managed to return to his friends, emergency responders pronounced Katri dead about an hour later.

Late last year, Katri's uncle Jaswant Singh, a tailor in India, called for justice. Speaking to CBC News through a translator, Singh questioned why the young man who he regarded as a son was killed, wondering if it was a robbery or a hate crime.

When they announced charges in relation to Katri's death, police would not comment on a motive, saying it would come out in court.

Hoodie seized, DNA analyzed

During the course of their months-long investigation, police gathered surveillance footage from locations around Truro and obtained more than a dozen judicial authorizations. They got warrants to analyze data on several cellphones and to search the Robie Street apartment building and at least one other residence. They were looking for knives, clothing and keys to vehicles.

They seized a red hoodie with a stain on it and compared DNA found on it with evidence gathered from the victim, according to the redacted records.

Police were also granted approval to take blood and tissue samples from Prosper and another man. The reports on the forensic DNA analysis were blacked out, as were many of the details pertaining to the suspects in the court records.

Most names were redacted and the records don't shed any light on Denny's connection to the case.

The search warrant documents also show police requested call records from a jail in early November. The calls were to be screened to remove any conversations that would be protected by solicitor-client privilege. The name of the institution, the inmate and the date range requested were redacted.

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