Amarith Keo outside the Kelowna courthouse Amarith Keo was handcuffed and taken into custody inside a Kelowna courtroom Thursday morning after being sentenced to four months in jail for an unprovoked attack in July 2020. District Court Judge David Russe imposed the sentence on Keough, 33, despite recommendations from both Crown counsel David Grabavachs and defense attorney Lynn Pham that Keough serve no time for the attack. The Crown asked for a one-year suspended sentence, followed by a year of probation, while the defense asked for a three-year conditional discharge that would leave Keo with no criminal record. Judge Ruse dissented. In handing down his decision, the judge said a suspended sentence would not be appropriate and a conditional sentence would be contrary to the public good, deciding instead on a prison term. Keo pleaded guilty in July last year to assaulting an 18-year-old woman who had just finished a shift at the Cactus Club restaurant in the city center just after midnight on July 12, 2020. CCTV footage showed Keo following the teenager, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, to her car in Library Park and attacking her as she sat in her vehicle. She was left with two black eyes, a bloody nose and an inflammation in her ear. Keo stated that he had been drinking and had taken GHB on the night in question and did not remember the attack. However, in his summation, Judge Ruse said he was unable to infer disability, citing the fact that Keo shielded his face from CCTV cameras in the park, used other vehicles to hide his movements, attacked a vulnerable woman and hit her repeatedly in the head and face where she could do the most damage. Along with the prison sentence, Keo was also sentenced to one year of probation, have no conduct with the victim, be prohibited from possessing weapons of any kind for a period of five years and apologize to the victim. Keo, originally from Alberta, now lives in Kamloops and works as a conductor on the TransMountain pipeline expansion project.
