No more jail time for any of eight girls convicted in swarming

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Rowdy, drunk and high, the wild pack of troubled young girls met up at Yorkdale before hopping on the subway to head downtown.

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By the end of the night, after what a judge would call “brazen, feral and immature” attacks on other commuters, being thrown out of TTC stations, and shoplifting, the vicious girls savagely swarmed a defenceless homeless man across from Union Station, leaving him with a fatal stab wound to the heart and 19 injuries from blunt-force trauma.

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And for that, not one would be sentenced to more time in custody than what they had already spent before being released on bail.

It was around midnight – five days before Christmas 2022 – when Kenneth Lee, 59, arrived at the narrow parkette at the corner of Front and York Sts. with his partner Erika Tong, who was staying at the nearby shelter in the Strathcona Hotel. When he left her alone for a few minutes, the teens harassed Tong and stole her bottle of booze.

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When Lee returned, he told the girls to leave her alone.

They pounced on him seconds later – three minutes and 20 seconds of senseless mob violence that unfolded in three waves that killed the man and shocked the city.

None of these girls, aged 13 to 16 at the time, can be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. All were arrested for second-degree murder, seven would plead guilty to lesser charges, and the eighth would be acquitted of murder at her judge-alone trial and convicted instead of manslaughter.

All spent time in custody before sentencing – but none would get further jail time after both Ontario Court Justice David Rose and Superior Court Justice Philip Campbell found their rights were violated by unwarranted strip searches while in youth detention.

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Six of the girls had the gall to argue that their charges should be thrown out because of the Charter violations – which both judges rejected, saying a sentence reduction was the more appropriate remedy.

These teens, though, were never going to be locked up for as long as some in the outraged public would demand.

The YCJA requires judges to recognize the diminished moral culpability of kids under 18 to reflect uncontradicted evidence that their brains are not fully developed and they’re more susceptible to peer pressure – and more susceptible to positive change with the right counselling.

In the end, the longest any of the girls spent in custody for the horrific beating and stabbing of a vulnerable homeless man was credited at 20 months.

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GIRL 1

Just after 9:30 pm on Dec. 17, 2022, the 13-year-old was seen with the other girls on the Yorkdale Subway platform running with a blue-handled knife. After play fighting, she handed the knife off to another in the group as they all boarded the southbound train to St. George.

She admitted lunging and yelling at two male passengers and chasing them down the platform. She and her friends got kicked out of the station – only to re-enter and harass another passenger before catching the subway to St. Andrew.

At the downtown station, she admitted trying to assault two women, but she was restrained by some of her friends – though she doesn’t recall that part of the night. By 11:53 pm, the group arrived in the parkette at the foot of University Ave. A security video camera mounted on an office building captured the entire attack.

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The judge found she was a “very active participant in the swarming. She was aggressive throughout, landing multiple punches on Mr. Lee,” but she didn’t have a weapon or deliver the fatal stab to the heart. 

Diagnosed with a Persistent Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Eating Disorder, Cannabis Use Disorder (which is in early remission), and Conduct Disorder, her parents split when she was five years old. At 12, she began smoking marijuana daily. She also seriously abused alcohol: She was hospitalized after attempting suicide by alcohol poisoning and in the months before the swarming, she blacked out five to six times.

According to her pre-sentence report, she regretted the incident but also believed Lee put his hand on one of the girls and deserved to be beaten.

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While initially in custody, she was strip searched six times, and briefly left totally naked on four occasions. To comply with a judicial order banning the strip searches, she was then placed in segregation for 24 hours. 

After her release on bail, she was rearrested in February 2024 on charges she stabbed a TTC commuter at Wilson station – to which she later pleaded guilty.

She was the first to plead guilty to manslaughter in the OCJ on May 30, 2024. Rose credited her with 15 months in custody for the 218 days she actually spent in open custody and 53 days in closed, and sentenced her to 21 months probation in the Intensive Support and Supervision Program (ISSP).

“I find (she) is at a real risk to re-offend violently if she is not given the benefit of extensive treatment and counselling in the next few years,” Rose said at the time.

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GIRL 2 

The teen with the long ponytail and fake eyelashes admitted that at the tender age of 13, she kicked Lee, threw a plastic water bottle at him and “forcefully” hit him twice in the head area with a green bag as he lay “crumpled on the ground having just collapsed after being swarmed and attacked” and “was trying to protect his head from the onslaught of kicks, stomps and punches” still being rained down on him by the others.

She pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm in the OCJ on June 4, 2024, ahead of her trial. Taking her three strip searches into account, Rose sentenced her to 12 months probation on Sept. 24, 2024.

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GIRL 3 (bag of ice girl)

She was 14 and one of the ringleaders when she joined up with the marauding teens creating mayhem on the subway and hit a woman outside the TTC’s St. Andrews subway station. She stole a swig of booze from Tong and continually hit Lee with her white shopping bag of ice.

“And even after he’s on the ground and adults are breaking it off, she’s still stomping on his head,” Crown attorney Sarah De Filippis would say. “She was one of the most violent in the group. She was dedicated to this attack and she was relentless, even to the last minutes when he was crumpled on the ground.”

Still frighteningly clueless, the pigtailed teen had no remorse and minimized her role to an almost “ludicrous degree,” the prosecutor said.

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Apprehended at nine months by child protection and raised by her loving grandmother, she was physically assaulted and sexually abused by her peers, with both incidents uploaded to social media, and she’s been diagnosed with PTSD, ADHD and marijuana abuse and “normalized stealing,” Rose said in his judgment.

More concerning, he said, is her “disturbing complete lack of acceptance of responsibility” in comments she made in a court report: she called Lee “a piece of s—,” said “I don’t care” about what happened, and it was “not that serious” to warrant a plea to manslaughter. Yet, she wrote an apology letter to the court and told her probation officer she feels bad for what she did.

She “tells different versions about this event depending on who she is speaking to,” the judge concluded. “Her acceptance of responsibility is nowhere near complete.”

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She pleaded guilty on June 24, 2024 to manslaughter and was sentenced Jan 28, 2025 to two years probation under the ISSP. She was credited with 15 months in pre-sentence custody after being strip searched seven times.

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GIRL 4 (vise grips girl)

The 13-year-old who met up with the other girls at Yorkdale subway station around 9 p.m. was smoking marijuana daily and was “blackout drunk.”

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She pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the OCJ on June 17, 2024. She was sentenced by Rose to a 15-month ISSP probation order on Sept. 16, 2024, after serving 243 days of pre-sentence custody, being strip searched seven times and flown in the middle of the night 1,900 km away to Kenora when the sprinklers malfunctioned at Marjorie Amos detention centre in Brampton.

GIRL 5 (pylon girl)

The 16-year-old had been consuming Crown Royal and marijuana that night and was seen trying to stop some of the girls from assaulting strangers as they headed downtown. She was only involved in the last 23 seconds of the assault on Lee by raising a pylon over her head and hitting him with it three times.

She went on trial for second-degree murder in the Superior Court of Justice earlier this year. Just as lawyers were scheduled to present closing arguments, she was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter on Feb. 18 after the Crown made the surprising acknowledgment that prosecutors couldn’t prove murder.

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“No words can undo what happened,” she told the court in her apology letter. “My actions took away something sacred, something irreplaceable.“

Campbell sentenced her on May 16 to 15 months probation after she spent 288 days in custody and underwent six strip searches.

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GIRL 6 (the bottle stealer)

The 16-year-old pulled the hair of two Asian women on the subway ride downtown that night and unwittingly set the swarming in motion when she stole the bottle of booze from Tong.

She admitted throwing a cup at Lee during the attack and filming his bloodied face before leaving the parkette. When she returned after the deadliest part of the assault, a shelter worker asked her to flag down an ambulance, which she did.

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Her lawyer told the court she’s finally on track to graduate from high school with hopes of attending college.

Her trial for manslaughter was to begin May 5, 2025, in Superior Court but she pleaded guilty to assault on April 4 and was sentenced by Campbell to nine months probation after finding she’d been strip searched and her role in the swarming was “relatively low.”

GIRL 7 

The teen, 14 at the time, was high on alcohol and marijuana, and was one of the least responsible in the violent attack: she wasn’t armed, she had earlier tried to calm her co-accused and only became involved in the final phase of the swarming when she mistakenly believed Lee had initiated an assault on her friend, when he was really trying to defend himself.

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The agreed statement said she “hit, punched, kicked and filmed” Lee.

The girl, diagnosed with PTSD, ADHD, conduct disorder and oppositional disorder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter before Campbell on May 5, 2025, the day her trial was set to begin in Superior Court. She was sentenced on June 26 to 12 months probation.

Of the eight accused, she spent the most time in custody – 345 days – which Campbell credited to 18 months. 

GIRL 8 (the stabber)

The alleged stabber, 14 at the time, tried to plead to manslaughter before her judge-alone trial earlier this year on second-degree murder charges but it was rejected by the Crown. On May 30, Campbell convicted her of manslaughter, finding she stabbed Lee shallowly under the armpit with eyebrow scissors and was lunging toward him again, but he couldn’t conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that she inflicted the deep, fatal blow.

Following a heartfelt apology and demonstrated progress, she was credited on Aug. 1 with 20 months for her 240 days in custody and four illegal strip searches. Campbell sentenced her to 16 months probation – with up to 12 months in the ISSP.

mmandel@postmedia.com

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