As the second anniversary approaches of the vicious swarming death of Kenneth Lee, one of three girls who pleaded guilty to manslaughter is up on new charges in Peel.
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But even the judge in the swarming case wasn’t told what they are.
Lucky for her, though, both the Crown and defence agree she should receive enhanced credit for the 93 days she spent in custody on those charges when Justice David Rose calculates how much, if any, time she should serve for her role in the senseless slaying of the homeless man shortly after midnight on Dec. 18, 2022.
Why the credit? Because if she hadn’t been on bail at the time for manslaughter, she wouldn’t have been held in custody on these lesser charges.
“I don’t even know what these charges are,” Rose said during the sentencing hearing Friday.
“You don’t and that’s intentional,” agreed the girl’s lawyer, Anne Marie Morphew. The judge was assured they weren’t very serious and if convicted, she’s looking at probation and not any time back in custody.
Yet is no one concerned that a teen on bail while awaiting sentencing for manslaughter is arrested yet again? It seems not.
And what about that recent CAMH assessment where she didn’t express much remorse about the deadly beating and stabbing of the defenceless man by a posse of girls?
Morphew told Rose the girl was tired and having a bad day during the assessment.
“She has expressed significant remorse to me,” the lawyer insisted. “It does weigh on her very heavily all the time that she participated in an event in which someone died,” Morphew said.
At an earlier hearing in September, Crown attorney Sarah De Filippis said it was shocking to read one of the ringleaders minimize her role to an almost “ludicrous degree” in the CAMH meeting.
“She thought Mr. Lee was a piece of s–,” the prosecutor said the now-16-year-old reported in her psychological assessment. “She minimizes her involvement, (saying) ‘I have no guilt. I didn’t do anything serious. I had nothing to do with what caused his death.’“
Those statements were surprising and “inconsistent” with her expressions of remorse, her lawyer told Rose on Friday, and could be the product of her trust issues and how much she’s willing to “lower her walls on a particular day.”
Court heard the girl, 14 at the time, had joined up with the marauding teens on the subway and hit a woman outside the TTC’s St. Andrews subway station. She later indirectly “instigated” the swarming, De Filippis said, when she stole a bottle of booze from a homeless woman in the parkette in what was “part of a pattern of unprovoked violence.”
When Lee, 59, stepped in to protect his friend, the angry mob descended on him. All agree this teen wasn’t armed with the knife and didn’t inflict the deadly blow, but on the video can be seen repeatedly kneeing and stomping on the helpless man.
She’s one of four girls who has pleaded guilty — she and two others to manslaughter and one to assault causing bodily harm. Four others go on trial next year, three for second-degree murder and one for manslaughter.
Two of the teens who pleaded to manslaughter, both 13 at the time of the attack, have already been sentenced by Rose: the first received 15 months of probation under an Intensive Support and Supervision Program after credit for 15 months of pre-sentence custody. The second was given the same amount of credit and sentenced to 21 months probation under the ISS program, which includes mandatory counselling for mental health and substance abuse issues.
“Further incarceration,” Rose said, “would serve no lawful purpose.”
The judge found the deadly swarming followed three hours of escalating brazen violence as the girls, “at times confronted, jostled, assaulted innocent bystanders who were simply taking a subway on a Saturday night before the Christmas holidays.
That was followed by the shocking, “vicious, cowardly” attack on Lee, Rose said.
So what sentence will this girl receive? Perhaps none at all.
Her lawyer is asking the judge to stay the charge because her Charter rights were breached when she underwent seven strip searches while in custody.
Her sentencing hearing continues next week.