MANDEL: Girl acquitted of murder in swarming of homeless man
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In the end, not one of the eight girls who viciously swarmed a Toronto homeless man has been convicted of murder.
How wrong that seems.
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MANDEL: Girl acquitted of murder in swarming of homeless man Back to video
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SC was the last girl standing, the final teen in the gang of eight to face judgment for her role in the brutal and senseless slaying of Kenneth Lee.
But not just any girl — prosecutors allege she’s the actual killer who fatally stabbed the 59-year-old with a knife or small scissors during the chaotic violence that lasted just over three minutes in the parkette at Front St. and University Ave. five days before Christmas 2022.
In his ruling Friday afternoon, Superior Court Justice Philip Campbell said SC, 14 at the time, “likely” inflicted the fatal wound but it hadn’t been proven beyond a reasonable doubt — so he found her not guilty of second-degree murder but guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter.
She had tried to plead guilty to manslaughter before her trial but it was rejected by the Crown. She now joins five of her co-accused who did plead to manslaughter, while the other two pleaded to lesser offences.
“SC participated in a group attack on Mr. Lee. For at least the last minute and 42 seconds, she was in possession of a pair of small scissors. At least once, she sank the scissors intentionally into Mr. Lee’s body. During the last wave of the attack, she intended to use the scissors, and she may have done so. The attack was a vicious one driven by what seems to be irrational and inexplicable malice. The attack killed Mr. Lee,” he said in reading his verdict.
Despite her “irrational viciousness” in wielding the scissors, Campbell wasn’t convinced she had the state of mind required for murder — that she either intended to kill him or to cause bodily harm she knew would probably cause his death.
“The word murder is not a shorthand for an extreme level of moral failure or a high degree of viciousness,” he concluded. “It demands a very specific mental orientation by the accused toward the causing of death. This mental orientation must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence here does not meet that burden. This was a manslaughter and was very close to the most serious example of that offense, but it was not a murder.”
Crown attorney Sarah De Filippis advised the court that prosecutors haven’t decided whether they’ll be seeking an adult sentence.
Initially, all eight girls — aged at the time between 13 and 16 — were charged with second-degree murder.
The routine stripsearches they endured while in youth detention facilities lead to criticism by both judges hearing their cases — Justice David Rose in the Ontario Court of Justice and Campbell in Superior Court — and led to Campbell declaring them unconstitutional. Both judges took the girls’ mistreatment into consideration to lower their sentences.
As a result, none of the seven sentenced so far have had to do more time in custody. Will SC be the first?
lt all began over a bottle of booze belonging to Lee’s friend.
When Lee stepped in to protect her, the angry mob descended on him like a “bunch of wolves on top of a piece of meat,” a shelter worker would later say.
From the start, SC was one of the most violent, Campbell said. “She literally jumped on Mr. Lee’s body.”
Horrific video of the attack shows the girls had no mercy on the slight man — a beloved son, brother and uncle who was working on personal issues and hoped to return home for Christmas.
But they didn’t see him as a person.
In the three waves of attack, one teen used vice grips to beat him, one used a bag of ice, another used a pylon, while others punched, kicked, stomped and spit on him. Lee suffered 19 blunt force injuries from their swarming.
And then there were the stab wounds: a shallow one under his left underarm likely caused by the scissors, and the deeper fatal wound to his heart – which a pathologist felt was “not very likely” caused by scissors.
SC had two pairs of nail scissors when she was arrested. The girls were seen with a knife that night – but it’s never been found.
She’s back in court July 30 for a sentencing hearing.
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