Teen sentenced for Peachland house party death

A 19-year-old woman has been sentenced to 18 months in custody for the stabbing death of a teenaged girl at an Okanagan house party.

She will serve nine months in a youth facility and nine months under community supervision, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled, followed by 18 months probation.

The judge in Kelowna sentenced the young woman under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. She cannot be named because she was a minor at the time of the killing.

The West Kelowna woman stabbed Ashlee Hyatt at a house party in Peachland in 2010, when both girls were 16 years old.

The judge said the crime fell somewhere between "near murder" and "near accident".

He said he was troubled by the young woman's inability to accept responsibility for her actions, and that a sentence solely based in the community would not be adequate given the severity of the crime.

To this day, the accused says she did not stab Hyatt, although she made an emotional apology to the Hyatt family in court on Tuesday.

Hyatt's family says they are satisfied with the sentence, but they will never forgive their daughter’s killer.

"It doesn't matter how much counselling you have, it doesn't matter what you go through in your life, nothing will take away that nightmare," said Ashlee's mother, Charrie Hyatt.