Toronto teen sentenced in 2022 swarming death of homeless man

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TORONTO (Reuters) – One of eight teenaged girls charged in the 2022 swarming death of a homeless man in Toronto was sentenced on Monday but will not serve further jail time.

The girl, who was 13 at the time of the crime, is the first of the group to be sentenced. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and cannot be named under Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act.

She will not serve further jail time but will serve 15 months’ probation on top of the equivalent of 15 months already spent in custody, a judge determined. The judge ordered her to complete an intensive treatment program.

Police say the group of girls, aged 13 to 16 at the time, attacked 59-year-old Kenneth Lee, a homeless man, in downtown Toronto in late 2022, swarming and stabbing him to death.

She “is appalled at what she did,” her lawyer Leo Adler told Reuters.

In determining her sentence the judge took into account the fact that she had been kept for 93 days in jail-like “closed custody” contrary to the judge’s order and had been repeatedly strip-searched contrary to regulations, Adler said.

The sentence is “what I asked for so I think it’s certainly an appropriate sentence,” he added.

“The judge obviously believes she has good potential and that the risk of her re-offending is very, very low.”

Adler added that this was a “terrible event” but his client did not set out that night to kill someone.

“In Canada we don’t treat 13-year-olds the way we treat adults. … Their brains are differently formed and function differently.”

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Sandra Maler)