It was a particularly brutal, shocking murder. Accenting the horror was the age and gender of the suspected killers.
There were eight of them, girls, aged 13 to 16, and they were allegedly on a mission of mayhem.
Nearly two years after the mobbing attack that left 59-year-old homeless man Kenneth Lee dead, the matter is still making its way through the courts.
Toronto cops said Lee was swarmed and then stabbed to death near Union Station over defending a friend who was guarding her bottle of booze.
Four of the youths have since pleaded guilty to lesser charges in the case: Three to manslaughter and one to assault causing bodily harm.
Next year, the remaining quartet will stand trial. Three are dealing with second-degree murder charges and the outlier is charged with manslaughter. Each have all pleaded not guilty to their respective charges.
Noted Toronto criminal lawyer Monte MacGregor — who has been involved in dozens of murder trials — told the Toronto Sun why he thinks the girls would opt for a judge.
“You want a judge when you have a better case on the law, you want a jury when you have a better case on the facts,” MacGregor told the Sun.
“It’s likely that the ones who opted for judge alone are not the stabber (the one that was directly responsible for causing the death). In law, you can be charged because you are the principal that caused the death or you can be considered a party to the offence by aiding or assisting in causing the death.”
In the riddle of the Wayward Teen Girls, you opt for the judge, the lawyer said.
“In this case, you would likely want a judge over a jury if you were not the stabber because you would argue that you … didn’t know that the stabber had a knife and was going to use it to cause the death,” MacGregor said.
“A judge is supposed to look past the heinous nature of the offence and solely assess the case on the law without injecting emotion. A jury may convict someone far more easily by relying more on emotion and not adhering to the strict letter of the law.”
And the murder of Ken Lee was very, very emotional, with one veteran detective telling me he thought the alleged killers were “animals.”
According to cops, Lee was attacked by a rabid wolfpack of teen girls, high on booze and attitude, shortly after midnight on Dec. 18, 2022, in a parkette near University Ave. and Front St. after he came to the aid of a female friend who’d been robbed of her alcohol.
Of course, the accused can’t be identified because of the trainwreck known as the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Keep in mind, Ken Lee was stabbed in the heart. His body had 19 different wounds from blunt-force trauma.
And now, sometime in the new year, his family will once again be dragged through his horrifying final minutes on this earth.
The accused? If convicted they will do a few months — if any time — in juvie, get a blast of street cred and move on. Possibly to more horrors.
“The key in selecting a judge is that the defence will focus on the lack of overall contribution by the individual participant and will argue that the death was not foreseeable — essentially, they didn’t know the stabber was going to use the knife,” MacGregor explained.
“Aiming for a not guilty or at its highest a manslaughter — not a murder conviction.”
@HunterTOSun