TORONTO — A teen girl accused of stabbing a homeless Toronto man did not have a knife at any point that night, her lawyers told an Ontario court Tuesday as they argued the girl wasn't the one to inflict the fatal wound.
Defence lawyers for the girl began making their closing submissions after her co-accused entered a surprise guilty plea to manslaughter.
Both girls, who were 14 and 16 at the time of the incident, had pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Kenneth Lee, a 59-year-old man who was living in Toronto's shelter system.
Court has heard Lee died in the early hours of Dec. 18, 2022, after he was swarmed by a group and stabbed in a downtown parkette.
Prosecutors have alleged the younger teen stabbed Lee with a knife in the final moments of a fight that lasted less than 3.5 minutes.
The judge-alone trial, which started roughly two weeks ago, has pored over security footage from the parkette and other locations the group attended before and after the incident.
Two other girls in the group were captured on video holding either one knife or two different knives at a subway station earlier in the night.
In their submissions, defence lawyers for the younger girl argued there's no indication their client ever had a knife that night, nor is there enough to conclude she knew someone else did.
No knife was ever recovered as part of the investigation, court has heard. The younger girl was found with two small scissors and a pair of tweezers at the time of arrest.
An autopsy found that Lee died from hemorrhagic shock — the gradual shutdown of internal organs due to blood loss — after being stabbed in the heart.
He also had another, smaller stab wound near his armpit that did not contribute to his death, as well as 19 bruises and other blunt-force injuries, the forensic pathologist who examined him testified.
Dr. Magdaleni Bellis told the court it was unlikely the scissors found on the girl could have caused the fatal injury because the blades seemed small in comparison. The scissors could have caused the smaller stab wound, she said.
Blood was detected on two areas of one pair of scissors but tests couldn't establish who it belonged to, court has heard. Blood was also detected on multiple parts of the girl's jacket but Lee was ruled out as the source, court has heard.
Defence lawyer Boris Bytensky argued that even though the incident was caught on security camera, the footage doesn't provide any clear answers to some of the central questions in the case.
"It's impossible to know when Mr. Lee was fatally stabbed," or by whom, Bytensky said. The same goes for the other stab wound, he said.
"We know so little," he said, adding police initially thought one of the other girls was responsible for the fatal injury.
At the start of the trial, the younger accused girl tried to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, but her plea was rejected by the Crown.
Prosecutors accepted a similar plea from the older girl on Tuesday, however, saying they had reassessed the strength of the evidence for second-degree murder in her case.
The girl, who entered her plea through her counsel, was a "joint participant" in a group assault that resulted in Lee's death, according to an agreed statement of facts read in court.
At one point, one of the others in the group threw a bag of ice at Lee, who picked it up, the statement said. The older accused girl was in front of him at the time, likely leading him to assume she had been the one to hit him with it, court heard.
Lee struck the girl with the bag of ice, which set off another wave of attacks from some in the group, court heard. The girl threw a traffic cone at him and then hit him with one as he tried to fend off blows from others, who had pinned him against a retaining wall, the statement said.
She put down the pylon when she saw a shelter worker walking over, court heard. That person broke up the fight.
The girl's involvement in the final stretch of the incident lasted about 23 seconds, court heard.
She didn't have the intention to kill Lee in that time, nor did she stab him, the statement said. The girl also didn't have a knife or other weapon during the fight, it said.
Eight girls were charged in the hours after Lee’s death.
Three girls pleaded guilty last year to manslaughter in the case and one to assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm, and a jury trial is scheduled in May for the remaining two girls.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2025.
Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press