The girls who swarmed Kenneth Lee in a downtown parkette filmed the bloodied, disoriented man on their phones during the attack, a courtroom heard Monday.
This was hours after the group had begun sharing bottles of Crown Royale, Sour Puss and Bacardi, as well as five marijuana blunts, one of the girls testified.
The details are the latest to emerge about the night a year and a half ago when Lee was fatally attacked by a group of teenagers downtown, further filling in a grim picture of the 59-year-old man’s final moments, in a case that has gripped the city.
They were made public for the first time Monday, during a hearing at which the girl became the third teenager to plead guilty in the high-profile case.
Originally charged with second-degree murder, the girl pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter in front of Ontario Court Justice David Rose.
Eight girls, ages 13 to 16, were initially all charged with second-degree murder for the incident that took place on the night of Dec. 18, 2022. Since then, two have been committed to stand trial in front of a jury for second-degree murder and one for a charge of manslaughter. Two others had pleaded guilty before Monday, one to manslaughter and one to assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon. Their sentencing hearings will take place later this year.
A fourth girl was scheduled to enter a plea on Monday, but her case has now been rescheduled to Wednesday. It is not yet clear whether she will plead or head to trial. The remaining girl is expected to enter a plea later this month.Â
On Monday, the girl who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, who was 13 at the time, admitted to using a weapon on Lee — a pair of vice grips or wrench — but she wasn’t the one who stabbed him, according to an agreed statement of facts read out Monday. She also wasn’t in possession of a knife.
Lee’s cause of death was determined to be a stab wound that punctured his heart. So far, none of the girls who have pleaded guilty have admitted to stabbing him.Â
The girl sat in a black hoodie, hair pulled back in a bun, as Crown attorney Mary Humphrey described her involvement as part of the statement.
Four other girls are expected to plead guilty and three are headed for a jury trial at Superior Court.Â
Four other girls are expected to plead guilty and three are headed for a jury trial at Superior Court.Â
The statement said the girl punched, kicked, spat on and struck at Lee with the wrench during the first waves of the attack.
At one point, the girls stood before Lee, spitting on him and, Humphrey read, “saw fit to make” videos “memorializing” the man in that moment: disoriented, his face bloodied.
In the final wave of the attack, the statement said, Lee was pressed against a concrete retaining wall in the parkette near Front Street and University Avenue, as a group of the girls attacked him. The teen who pleaded guilty Monday was said to have climbed onto the wall and “positioning herself behind Mr. Lee,” hit him repeatedly on the back with the wrench.
It’s not clear if those strikes made direct contact with Lee, who was wearing a backpack at the time, the statement said.
The agreed statement also revealed publicly for the first time that the girl, while in custody, had been given an MP3 player by the youth facility where she was being held and used it to make voice recordings about Lee’s death to share with another girl in custody.
In one clip, she is heard saying her name and sharing her social media handles. In the next, using several racial slurs, she describes how she used her vice grips in “beating” Lee after he “came at her” and how she was drunk and high.
As part of her plea deal, the girl agreed to take the stand to answer questions from the Crown and her own lawyer about her involvement. As part of that testimony, she said there were several bottles of alcohol between the group that she and others were drinking from as well as five joints. She told the Crown she thought she took more than five shots of alcohol but less than ten, agreeing it was the most she had ever drunk.
When her own lawyer asked how she felt when she found out Lee had been stabbed, she answered: “Bad.” When pushed to elaborate, she spoke of her situation.
“Because I was there. And I’m here … I did something, I’m part of something happening that’s bad.”
TTC surveillance footage, the court heard in this and previous plea hearings, captured the group of teens heading southbound on Line 1, harassing passengers as they went and at times being escorted out of the subway system.
Their paths collided with Lee near Union Station just before midnight.
Lee was trying to defend his female companion after several of the girls harassed the woman, stealing her alcohol, according to an agreed statements of facts read at previous plea hearings.
Paramedics — who arrived on scene after being flagged down by a bystander — did not immediately realize Lee had been stabbed. He died on the operating table despite the efforts of St. Michael’s Hospital workers to save him.

Kenneth Lee.
pc28¹ÙÍøPolice Service/Canadian Press
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