Riverdale actor Ryan Grantham sentenced to life in prison after murdering his mother

The Canadian actor will not be eligible to apply for parole for the first 14 years of his life sentence

Ryan Grantham has been jailed for life after he was found guilty of murdering his own mother.

On 31 March 2020, Barbara Waite was found dead at her Canada home with a single gun-shot wound to the head.

Her then-21-year-old son had shot her in the back of the head, while she played the piano in her Squamish townhouse.

In March this year, two years from the tragic incident, the Riverdale actor pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Now 24-years-old, Grantham will not be eligible to apply for parole for the first 14 years of his life sentence.

Despite knowing his crime came with a life sentence, both Grantham and his lawyer hoped for an earlier possibility of parole from the British Columbia Prosecution Service (BCPS).

A GoPro video shot by the actor himself shows him confessing to his mother’s murder, before packing his car with guns, ammunition and Molotov cocktails.

He had the intention of travelling to Ottawa to kill Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who Grantham later told the police was “the most important person in Canada”.

However, that night he turned around and drove to the Vancouver Police Department to turn himself in for the murder of his mother.

During a trial hearing in June this year, he showed remorse to the court whilst saying that he had “no excuse”.

Grantham said: “I cannot explain or justify my actions. I have no excuse. It hurts me to think about how badly I’ve wasted my life.

"In the face of something so horrible, saying sorry seems so pointless. But from every fibre of my being, I am sorry,"

Grantham started acting when he was nine-years-old and is most well known for his role in the British Columbia- based series Riverdale.

His character Jeffrey Augustine accidentally murdered Fred Andrews in a hit and run whilst driving his fathers car illegally. His father, George, then takes the blame for the incident.

Luke Perry, who played Fred in the Netflix series, died of stroke in March 2019 and needed to be written out of the show.