A fourth and final teenager charged in the murder of a homeless man in the city pleaded guilty Monday to a reduced charge of manslaughter in Toronto youth court. In total, four out of eight minors confessed rather than undergo a jury trial in a higher court like their alleged accomplices.
The teenager No 6, who cannot be identified due to his age, was 14 years old at the time of his arrest. She wore pink shorts and a black sweater for her audience.
Her hair was tied in a bun, the ends of which had been dyed red. She wore sandals Fangs black and bracelets on her ankles.
Her grandmother, who vouched for her in January 2023, was in the courtroom.
Open in full screen mode
The group bail hearing for seven of the eight teenagers was held on January 20, 2023, which allowed prosecutor Sarah de Filippis to pass her evidence to all defense attorneys before the individual hearings began. (Archive image)
Photo: Radio-Canada / Pam Davies
This latest guilty plea provides new insight into what happened when Ken Lee was stabbed, but the press is only allowed to publish information about him so as not to damage the impartiality of the upcoming trial .
According to the Crown, the teenager No 6 did not know her co-defendants well, but they had friends in common.
She met her co-accused at 9 p.m. on the evening of December 17, 2022, at the metro station Yorkdale, in the northwest of the city.
Agreed Statement of Facts
For the purposes of the plea, the prosecutor Mary Humphrey read an agreed statement of facts in this case that the defense does not dispute.
It is 11:53 p.m. when the group meets, after several incidents on the subway, in a small concrete park near Union Station.
According to the Crown, the teenager No 6 was unaware that one of the girls in the group had a knife, but admitted that she had been drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana that evening.
Open in full screen mode
Ken Lee was the victim of a stabbing in December in Toronto, according to police.
Photo: Provided by the Toronto Police Service
The Crown claims that this teenager approached a homeless woman to ask her for a sip from her bottle of alcohol that she had spotted in her bag, before stealing it from her to drink a swig, then giving it back to her and joining the rest of the group.
Ken Lee, who was absent, joined the woman in question in the park and asked the eight teenage girls to stop bothering her. It was then that the attack began, which lasted nearly 4 minutes.
Three-phase attack
In a first phase, the adolescent No 6 kicked and punched Ken Lee, and stomped on him while spitting on him and yelling at him.
In a second phase, she hit him with a bag filled with ice twice before throwing a bottle of water at him.
Open in full screen mode
The small concrete square (left) with the two glass entrances to the underground passages in downtown Toronto, where the fatal attack on Ken Lee took place.
Photo: Radio-Canada / CBC
She then climbed up a low wall against which Ken Lee was pinned before kicking him and hitting him again with an ice pack.
In the last phase, she pursued Ken Lee, who had managed to extricate himself from his predicament, before being joined by members of her group. She grabbed him by the head and threw him to the ground.
She kicked and stomped him before the group was dispersed by a shelter worker Strathcona from the street York.
Autopsy of 59-year-old homeless man
The minor No 6 then grabbed a grocery cart that appeared to belong to the homeless woman she had been harassing and emptied it of its contents before fleeing for good with the group.
Ken Lee suffered 19 blows to the face and body before being fatally stabbed to the heart.
The eight teenagers were arrested around 3 a.m. when police became aware of an attack on a homeless person downtown and seized videos from surveillance cameras in the park and the metro.
Open in full screen mode
The steps of the Strathcona Homeless Hotel are located just behind the concrete plaza where Ken Lee was stabbed to death in 2022. He often visited a friend there.
Photo: Radio-Canada / CBC
Police officers discovered them at the hospital for sick children, where one of their friends had been injured in the wrist in a friendly fight with a member of the group.
Me Humphrey specifies that several young girls denounced the teenager No 6 to the police, maintaining that it was she who had stabbed Ken Lee, but the prosecutor assured that this was not the case.
Assaults in the metro
Earlier in the evening, several verbal and physical altercations with users of the CTT occurred between stations St.George And St. Andrewthen to Union Station, but the minor No 6 only participated at the end.
When the group arrived at St. Andrewthe minor No 6 attacked a blonde woman who was sitting with two other women on the stairs at the subway exit. She pulled her hair, hit and kicked her, before a police officer CTT do not call 911.
Open in full screen mode
The four minors who pleaded guilty to various reduced charges will now be heard in youth court at the Ontario Court of Justice in downtown Toronto.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Paul Smith
The group will flee outside before finding themselves in the concrete square where the fatal attack on Ken Lee occurred.
Standing in the witness box, the teenager No 6 did not dispute the facts. She is due back in court for her sentencing hearing in early September. She faces a maximum of 3 years in prison.
Prosecutor Sarah De Filippis told the court that the Crown would no longer seek an adult sentence in his case, contrary to what she had announced during her bail hearing 18 months ago.
