'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' actor kills mother, sentenced to life imprisonment

Former child actor in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Ryan Grantham, was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his mother in 2020, reports The Deadline.

Grantham, 24, had turned himself to the police soon after shooting his 64-year-old mother Barbara Waite in the back of the head on March 31, 2020, in the family’s Squamish home, just north of Vancouver.

The actor was handed down the by-the-book second-degree murder punishment on September 21 by British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker in Vancouver. While the sentence was an inevitable conclusion according to the laws of the Canadian province, it was the matter of when Grantham could apply for parole. He will not be eligible for parole for the first 14 years of his life sentence, details the publication.

Grantham’s lawyers argued he had been struggling with anxiety and clinical depression and had expressed a desire to kill himself and harm others in the months leading up to him killing his mother.

It was revealed in court that Grantham had made a video of the killing, while saying “I shot her in the back of the head. In the moments after, she would have known it was me.”

At one point, the actor was going to kill Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, as he wrote in a journal entered as evidence. The court also heard Grantham had considered committing an act of mass violence at Vancouver's Lions Gate Bridge or at Simon Fraser University, where he had been a student, en route before turning his car around and handing himself in.

After drinking beer and smoking marijuana for hours following the murder, he packed a car with three guns, ammunition and 12 Molotov cocktails he had made, as well as camping supplies and directions to Mr Trudeau's Rideau Cottage residence.

He drove roughly 200 kilometres east to the town of Hope, before turning around and driving to a Vancouver police station, where he bluntly told an officer, “I killed my mother.”

For the past two and a half years, the actor has been in custody and has been involved in a mental health programme since his arrest, law enforcement officials in Vancouver told Deadline.

Former child actor Grantham appeared in one episode of the CW network show Riverdale in 2019, and also featured in the fantasy drama Supernatural, as well the 2010 film Diary of a Wimpy Kid.