Teen girl may have meant to hurt Kenneth Lee but didn't intend to kill him: defence

Ken Lee is shown in a Toronto Police Service handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Toronto Police Service

TORONTO — A teen girl accused of fatally stabbing a homeless man during a chaotic and violent swarming in downtown Toronto may have meant to hurt him, but she didn’t intend to kill him, her defence lawyer argued Thursday.

Defence lawyer Boris Bytensky argued the girl, who was 14 at the time, wasn’t the one who delivered the deadly blow and had no more of an intent to kill than several other girls involved in the attack, including five who have pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

“Many others have resolved (their cases) on the basis of an acknowledgement that they did not have the intent to kill and so (the girl)’s intent is really no different than theirs,” he told the court on the final day of closing submissions.

Prosecutors have alleged the girl — one of eight teens charged in the case — stabbed Lee with a knife or small scissors during the attack at a parkette, which was captured on security video.

They have argued she deliberately positioned herself during the melee to strike Lee in the areas of his vital organs and would have known he was likely to die from those injuries, giving her the intent for murder.

No knife was recovered in the investigation, but the girl was found with two pairs of nearly identical nail scissors when she was arrested, court has heard.

The teen has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and the Crown has rejected her attempt to plead guilty to manslaughter.

The defence maintains the girl didn’t have a knife at any point that night, and that it’s impossible to tell from the video who stabbed Lee and when during the swarming, which played out in three waves over approximately three minutes and 20 seconds.

If the teen did wield the nail scissors during the attack, that’s not enough to find beyond a reasonable doubt that she meant to kill, Bytensky argued Thursday, describing the blades as just over three centimetres long with a slightly rounded tip.

“I would expect that somebody might think that they are more likely to kill somebody by kicking and punching them than they will simply by wielding this,” he said.

Bytensky noted one of the other girls can be seen hitting Lee in the head with vise grips, which he called a “much more obvious weapon.”

Court has heard Lee himself did not appear to know he had been stabbed at the time and didn’t mention any such injury to paramedics who arrived at the scene after the girls took off. One of the paramedics testified they didn’t realize the nature of his injuries until after he collapsed and was loaded onto the ambulance.

The 59-year-old died on the operating table in the early hours of Dec. 18, 2022, court has heard.

An autopsy found Lee died from hemorrhagic shock after he was stabbed in the heart, court has heard. He also had a smaller stab wound near his armpit that did not contribute to his death, as well as more than a dozen bruises and other injuries, according to the forensic pathologist who examined his body.

Dr. Magdaleni Bellis told the court it was unlikely that the scissors found with the girl would have caused the wound that killed Lee, because the blades appeared too short. The scissors could have caused the other, smaller stab wound, she said.

The Crown has argued that the girl had opportunities to dispose of a knife after the teens left the parkette, noting there are periods where the group wasn’t recorded by security cameras.

Two of the other girls were seen on video earlier in the night holding at least one knife as the group made its way downtown.

One of the girl’s friends who did not come with them and was not charged in the case testified they were part of a larger group that had been drinking and smoking marijuana at Yorkdale Mall earlier in the evening.

Eight girls between the ages of 13 and 16 were arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the hours after Lee’s death.

Four of them pleaded guilty last year — three to manslaughter and one to assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm.

Another girl who was initially part of the trial now underway pleaded guilty to manslaughter in February after the Crown said it had reassessed the strength of the evidence for second-degree murder in her case.

A verdict is expected in this case on May 30.

The two remaining teens are scheduled to face trial next month, one on a charge of second-degree murder and the other on a charge of manslaughter.

None of the accused can be identified because they were minors at the time of the incident.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 3, 2025.

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press