SASKATOON – A Saskatoon man was handed a six year, six months and 15 day prison sentence Friday for the death of 27-year-old Preston Logan Thomas.
Twenty-eight-year-old Joel Yuzicapi was charged with second-degree murder but last month pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Thomas’ mother Lillian Thomas made a rose to honour her son and took it with her when she attended Yuzicapi’s court appearances.
“Sometimes I wake up and hear myself screaming and I know this is not what my son would want for me, and I really don’t want to keep remembering what happened to him,” Lillian Thomas posted on Facebook. “Instead I want my thoughts to be of everything that was absolutely amazing about my son.”
Saskatoon Police found Preston Thomas deceased in a hotel room on Airport Drive at about 7:20 a.m. on Aug. 1, 2020.
Thomas and Yuzicapi knew each other and were partying in a group celebrating a birthday. The two got into an altercation and Yuzicapi stabbed Thomas twice.
Yuzicapi fled the scene and Saskatoon Police arrested him three days later in the 200 block of Avenue S North in Saskatoon.
Yuzicapi was ordered to provide a DNA sample to the National DNA Databank and he was banned from owning weapons for life.
