“None of us are hateful people, and we know that our anger is harming us, but we cannot escape it.”
With those words, an aunt of Burnaby teen Luka Gordic seemed to sum up the anguish that has consumed his large, tight-knit Italian-Serbian family since he was swarmed by a group of youths and stabbed to death in Whistler three years ago.
About 30 family members and friends were in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver Friday to present victim impact statements.
Pain, anger and bitterness flashed out in their words, as two young men found guilty of manslaughter in Luka’s death, and one convicted of second-degree murder, sat in a glassed-in dock with downcast eyes.
Outside of the courtroom, Luka’s mother Clara ran a finger across her throat when asked what she would ultimately like to have happen to the men responsible for her son’s death.
“That’s the ultimate,” she told the NOW. “What else? You know how they say ‘fair’? There’s nothing fair. There’s no true justice. You can’t just snap your fingers and Luka comes back … I want them to hurt. I want them to envision what they did, like all the details that came out in court. I want them to truly look within themselves and really think back and don’t deny what they did. I want them to remember, just like I do.”
Special from the start
Luka was special right from the start, family and friends told the court.
His mother had decided not to have any more kids after his older brothers and sister were born, but later had a change of heart, according to Luka’s aunt Yadranka Gordic.
Doctors told Clara she’d have little chance of becoming pregnant again after reversing her initial surgery. But against the odds, she conceived.
“From the moment he was born, we all knew that Luka was special,” his aunt said.
On May 17, 2015, however, just 15 days after his 19th birthday, this same aunt got a call from Luka’s mother that she relives each time she goes to sleep, according to her victim impact statement.
“The sound that I heard come from the receiver has haunted me ever since,” she said of that 2:30 a.m. phone call. “The piercing agony and despair in Clara’s scream was like nothing I had ever heard before in my life.”
Clara had gotten a call earlier that night, telling her and her husband Mitch their son, who had been in Whistler for a fun May long weekend getaway, had been hurt.
Rushing up to the village, the pair got a second call when they were about 10 minutes away informing them that Luka - the baby of the family - was dead.
“Mitch and I were hysterical,” Clara said. “I remember us screaming and crying.”
Police, however, would not let them see their son that night, and they drove back to Burnaby with Clara weeping and clutching a pillow all the way home.
When they were finally allowed to see Luka in the morgue of a Burnaby funeral home two weeks later, Clara said she held his body and wept over him for more than two hours.
"I wanted to bring a picture of Luka's dead body to remind you of all what you did to him – but that wasn't permitted," said Clara, glaring at the young men facing her from a glass dock.
All three were 17 years old the night Luka was killed, so their identities are protected by a publication ban.
All three had been close enough to the slain 19-year-old to get blood on their shoes and clothes when he was swarmed by about 10 teenagers outside a 7-Eleven and stabbed to death.
The very best of us
From the statements of aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, grandparents and friends, a picture emerged of Luka as a fun-loving, affectionate young man full of life, whose violent death has covered his family in a “dark blanket of depression.”
“The person we lost was the very best of us,” uncle Mike Gordic said simply.
Sobs could be heard from the gallery as Luka’s cousin Daniela Gordic told the court how she had run into Luka in Whistler on the night of his death.
He had kissed her on the head and told her to be safe.
A few hours later, at the Whistler RCMP detachment, an officer told her he was dead.
“I live in regret every single day knowing that I was up in Whistler and let Luka die alone,” she told the court. “I’m sick to my stomach knowing his last moment and breath was spent lying in a pool of blood … I don’t want to be happy anymore.”
Luka’s father’s victim impact statement, read out by Reiner because Mitch was in hospital last week, amplified her guilt and grief.
“From the first breath our children take to the last breath we take, we watch, we worry, we pray,” read the statement. “Our children are our flesh and blood. Their story is our story. Their dreams are our dreams. Their pain is our pain. Their death is our death. On May 17, 2015 at about 2 a.m., my life ended. My eyes were open, my heart still beating, there was breath in my lungs, and yet my life was forever gone.”
A petty dispute
The victim impact statements wrapped up a complicated sentencing hearing.
All that remains now is for Justice Clarence Schultes to decide whether he will sentence the young men as adults – something the prosecution has argued for – and what the sentences will be.
A date will be set early this month for a decision sometime in the coming months.
If sentenced as an adult, the man convicted of second-degree murder in Luka’s death faces a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for seven years.
A fourth man, Arvin Golic, who was 18 at the time of the killing and has already been sentenced for his role in it, instigated the deadly swarming attack on Luka over a petty dispute between the two young men.
