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Dante Ognibene-Hebbourn, 24, is scheduled to enter a guilty plea in May to manslaughter in the Feb. 26, 2022, death of 24-year-old Harmandeep Kaur.

This story contains a description of a homicide that readers may find disturbing. Discretion is advised.

A Kelowna man confessed Tuesday to the relentless and fatal beating of a young woman he worked alongside at UBC Okanagan.

Dante Ognibene-Hebbourn, 24, entered a guilty plea to the 2022 manslaughter death of 24-year-old Harmandeep Kaur, and the sentencing hearing that followed detailed, for the first time, both the gruesome attack and how it all began.

Crown Counsel David Grabavac told the court that Ognibene-Hebbourn was a janitor working at the university and while he was described by some as quiet, he was also troubled. He'd stopped taking an anti-psychotic medication in the year before the attack and had turned to illicit substances, making his behaviour erratic.

He was on several drugs the night he killed Kaur.

He was in what has been described in psychiatric reports as a "profound state of psychosis" when he turned his focus on Kaur, a security guard he'd been friends with, just after 5 a.m., Feb. 26, 2022.

Kaur, Ognibene-Hebbourn told police, was doing her patrols when she spotted him in a university classroom through a window, masturbating.

"He didn't want her to tell anybody, because he did not want to seem like a pervert," Grabavac said, referencing a statement Ognibene-Hebbourn made to police.

Instead, he became known for the violence that ended Kaur's life, all of which was caught on UBC Okanagan security cameras.

Grabavac described to the court in minute-by-minute detail of the footage that starts with a shirtless Ognibene-Hebbourn following Kaur through the university, the subsequent violent attack and Kaur laying lifeless in a puddle of her own blood.

First, he said, Ognibene-Hebbourn was seen walking through the school, with what appeared to be a knife in his hand. He threw something at Kaur and, around the same time, she could be seen stumbling down the stairs.

As Ognibene-Hebbourn nears, Kaur is seen backing toward glass doors with her arms in a defensive position.

Next, Grabavac said, Ognibene-Hebbourn "high kicks" Kaur in the torso.

"(Kaur) stumbles back and falls onto a ledge. She falls onto a floor mat in front of the internal glass doors," Grabavac said.

"(Kaur's) head is approximately three feet from the internal glass doors ... the security video shows the accused continued to advance on the deceased as she falls to the ground."

He punched her two times in the head, grabbed her body and then again "slammed" her into the ground.

Grabavac said Ognibene-Hebbourn then stomped on the right side of her torso with his full body weight.

He continued to kick her in the face and in the mid-section intermittently between 5:06 a.m. and 5:14 a.m. and when it was done the young woman was left motionless.

Grabavac said it was around 6 a.m. when Kaur was taken to Kelowna General Hospital. According to the agreed statement of fact, an RCMP officer was told by a neurosurgeon on the scene that Kaur suffered a massive head trauma and had pressure building up in the brain.

Grabavac said she was given medication to stimulate brain activity. If it worked, there would have been emergency brain surgery. If not, there would be none. In the end, there had been no surgery and Kaur died in hospital.

Ognibene Hebbourn was taken into custody and initially detained under the Mental Health Act on Feb. 26, 2022, before he was charged in the murder about a month later. An indictment to the lesser charge of manslaughter was entered Jan. 6.

The rationale for the lesser charge relates in large part to the psychiatric assessments that have happened since.

His mental state at the time of the killing is something that her family has asked the courts to not lessen the sentence for the crime he committed.

Kaur had immigrated to Canada from India in 2015, and moved to Kelowna in 2018. She had just obtained her permanent residency in the month prior to her death.

She was in school and was working to become a paramedic.

"Harmandeep was not only our beloved daughter, but also a cherished sister and a bright light in our family's life," Grabavac said, reading a victim impact statement from her parents, who were in the courtroom.

"She came to Canada with dreams, not only for herself, but for us as a family. She was only 24 when her life was taken... She wanted to become a paramedic to serve the community and save lives, but instead of fulfilling that dream, her life was brutally taken, and it was paramedics who came not to work alongside her, but to try and save her life."

"She never expected that she would be the one taken away, not as a caregiver, but as a victim."

Her parents said that she was proud of her job at the Okanagan university, doing her duty with "the heart of a soldier, watching over the students and campus at night."

"That night, it could have been a student in danger, but it was her, and even in her last shift, she was doing what she always did, protecting others," her parents said.

"We are so proud of her bravery, her commitment and selfless heart. She had a pure heart, a strong spirit and endless love for her family.

Their home now feels like a "shadow of what it once was" in the aftermath.

"She was our daughter full of life, hope and promise, her life was cut short by someone she worked alongside, someone she trusted," they said.

"We are pleading for justice not out of hatred, but from the depth of our grief, so that no other family has to experience what we are going through."

Sentencing will continue Wednesday afternoon.