The young woman who stabbed a mother of three to death during a fight in a West End apartment has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison.

Brooklyn Amira Golar, 21, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in B.C. Supreme Court this summer, admitting to stabbing 34-year-old Marline Mars four times in the chest on Oct. 13, 2017.

In reasons posted online this week, Justice Jeanne Watchuk gave Golar credit for 17 months already served, reducing her time behind bars to 46 months.

"You are a young person who committed a terrible, tragic offence, depriving someone of her life and her children of their mother," Watchuk told Golar during sentencing.

Golar was originally charged with second-degree murder, but the court heard Mars was the instigator of a fight that began when Golar asked for a smoke.

"Ms. Golar was not the aggressor. Ms. Golar was not looking for a fight. Her simple request for a cigarette led to a tragic sequence of events," Watchuk wrote.

A fight over cigarettes

On the day of the homicide, Golar was working as an escort and had rented a room in Kerry Ng's apartment at 1305 Jervis St., according to the judge's reasons. When her client left, she began asking around for a cigarette.

Mars and another woman were sitting in the living room at the time. When Golar asked the second woman for a smoke, a small argument broke out, and Mars inserted herself in the middle of it.

Ng told police that Mars grabbed Golar by the head or neck and pushed her into a piece of exercise equipment, knocking it over. He told Golar to leave and had started tidying up when he noticed that Mars was lying on the floor.

It was only after Ng called 911 and began performing CPR that he noticed she'd been stabbed. Paramedics pronounced Mars dead at the scene.

Youth offences

Golar was arrested nine days later — the only injury police could find was a cut on her finger. She told an undercover officer posing as her cellmate in jail that she is not the type of person who backs down and tends to black out when she's angry.

In the years before the fatal stabbing, Golar had been convicted of violent offences as a youth, including stabbing two random strangers in a single day. This is her first conviction as an adult.

As part of her sentence for manslaughter, she will have to submit a DNA sample and will be banned for life from possessing certain firearms.