Victim of Vancouver stabbing had asked man not to vape near toddler, says grieving mom

Paul Schmidt was engaged to be married. He’d been with his fiancée for six years and they had a three-year-old daughter together. During a family outing Sunday, the family stopped at a Vancouver Starbucks for coffee. Schmidt never made it home.

Schmidt’s mother, Kathy, is speaking out so people know who her son was.

“I can only stress what a beautiful soul Paul was,” she told CTV News. “Paul was a family man, who lived for his family. (Paul and his fiancé) were two peas in a pod.”

Police say two men got into a verbal altercation at a Starbucks in downtown Vancouver, which escalated into a physical altercation.

Schmidt, 37, was then stabbed and later died in hospital. 32-year-old Inderdeep Singh Gosal is charged with second–degree murder.

Schmidt’s mother believes it started with a simple argument.

“I’m told that this person that attacked him was standing beside the stroller vaping and Paul had asked him, or told him to move, and not smoke in front of her. And that’s how the altercation started.” 

“The attacker said to (Schmidt’s fiancée), ‘You better grab your kid. ’And then things escalated from there,” Kathy said.

Vancouver Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Steve Addison wouldn’t comment on the sequence of events, saying the case is still under investigation.

“We know what happened, we know how it happened, right now we’re working on understanding why it happened,” Addison said. “We want to better understand what was happening in the moments that led up to this.”

Graphic, raw video of the incident has been spreading on social media. Addison again repeated his request for people not to share it.

“Let's allow this man to have some dignity in death by not sharing graphic, gruesome video on social media,” he said.

By Tuesday morning, a small memorial was set up at the site of the attack. A GoFundMe has also been set up to help Schmidt`s fiancée and young daughter.

His family is still coming to terms with the shock and grief of losing a loved one so violently, and publicly.

“How could this happen?” Schmidt’s mother asked. “How could anybody just go out for a coffee on a Sunday afternoon and have this happen to them, in what you would think would be a safe place, a safe environment?”