Teen found not guilty of manslaughter after fatally stabbing 18-year-old in Toronto parking lot

Auptin Abedini-Senoubari, 18 (handout by Toronto police)

A teenage boy who fatally stabbed an 18-year-old in North York in 2022 and later boasted about the killing in messages sent to the victim’s friend has been found not guilty of manslaughter, a judge ruled last month.

Auptin Abedini-Senoubari was unarmed when he was fatally stabbed in a parking lot after attending an all-ages event at a lounge in the area of Finch Avenue West and Dufferin Street on the night of July 8, 2022.

In a decision released last month, Superior Court Justice Andras Schreck said Abedini-Senoubari suffered a single knife wound to the chest during a “senseless altercation between two groups of teenagers.”

The victim and the accused, who was 17 at the time of the incident and cannot be identified as per the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, did not know each other prior to the deadly stabbing. Both attended the same event that night, the judge noted.

According to the decision, the accused was kicked out of the lounge and was arguing with a security guard outside when the victim and his friends began to taunt him and record video of him with their phones.

The accused, the judge said, “became angry” and he and his friends began “exchanging taunts and insults with the other group.”

The teens ended up in a nearby parking lot, where physical altercations broke out, Schreck said.

At one point, the accused attempted to hit the victim with a bottle, swinging and missing on two occasions. When Abedini-Senoubari moved towards the accused while swinging at him with his right arm, the accused “extended his left arm towards Mr. Abedini-Senoubari’s chest” while holding a knife, causing the stab wound that killed the victim, the judge said.

The altercation ended when the accused fell to the ground, the judge added, noting that he was kicked and stomped on by the victim and one of his friends. Abedini-Senoubari collapsed seconds later. The accused was the only person involved in the altercation that was in possession of a weapon, the judge said.

‘Juvenile bravado’

Nine days after the stabbing, the accused sent messages through Instagram to a friend of the victim, writing “Ur homie dropped like a fly that day.”

He also sent a video of Abedini-Senoubari lying on the ground after the stabbing, although the judge said there was no suggestion that the accused was the one who shot the video.

“Ur right we had to yoke your homie we had to make it personal,” another message read.

“U think I’m scared come to my crib watch what happens… Don’t slip bc if you do u gon have to say what’s up to Auptin for me.”

Messages sent to the accused from the victim’s friend were not available and not introduced as evidence during the trial, the judge wrote.

The Crown argued that the messages sent after the stabbing support the conclusion that the accused specifically targeted Abedini-Senoubari and intended to inflict harm.

“…without the context of the other party’s portion of the conversation, I am not inclined to put much weight on the text messages,” the judge wrote.

He added that given the age of the accused and the “overall immature tone of the messages,” it appears that they were “largely an expression of juvenile bravado rather than a genuine description of his state of mind.”

In his decision, Schreck said he was not “satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt” that the actions of the accused on the night of the stabbing were unreasonable, adding that the Crown “failed to disprove that he acted in self-defence.”

The judge noted that the threat the accused was facing was “more than a punch from Mr. Abedini-Senoubari” but a “group assault by several individuals” who had shown that they were “not above ganging up on others.”

“Given the speed at which the events unfolded, the group dynamic and the fact that there was only one stab wound, I do not consider the force used to be disproportionate,” Schreck added.

‘Whole future ahead of him’

He said that both the victim and accused “made poor decisions,” choosing to escalate the altercation “rather than end it.”

“The verdict is not intended and should not be taken as condoning the conduct of (the accused) or anybody else. This case involved the tragic and senseless loss of the life of a young man who had his whole future ahead of him,” Schreck wrote.

“The altercation that led to this involved the escalation of a dispute over nothing of any importance and was fuelled by machismo and unfocussed, immature and unjustified aggression by adolescents apparently attempting to emulate some sort of gangster culture.”

He added that the accused and others involved “could have made different and better choices that would have resulted in a different outcome.”