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She and her partner were in their ambulance, on their way to another call and stopped at a red light at the University Avenue, York Street and Front Street intersection, when a woman approached them asking for help, Ellis said (The court earlier heard a shelter worker intervened to help Lee and redirected the ambulance the parkette).

Video footage shows the ambulance arrive and the paramedics begin speaking to Lee, who is seated on a set of steps near the parkette.

The man was alert and speaking with them, Ellis testified, as they assessed him for injuries. She said Lee complained of facial injuries and general body pain.

“He was apologizing for us having to be there,” Ellis said.

There was no indication he’d been stabbed, Ellis testified.

As the paramedic team was preparing to bring Lee into the ambulance, Ellis testified that Lee said he needed to have a bowel movement. After he climbed back off the stretcher and moved toward the parkette’s planter, Lee can be seen on video collapsing.

The paramedics rushed to help Lee up and into the ambulance. It’s only then, Ellis testified, that two “penetrating” injuries on his torso were discovered and the ambulance went on an emergency run — their lights and sirens activated — to St. Michael’s Hospital. Once there, the court earlier heard he died on the operating table.

Dr. Magdaleni Bellis, a forensic pathologist for the province, performed an autopsy the following day (Bellis testified before the trial formally began but her evidence only became public record on Friday).

She told the court the medical team at St. Michael’s reported Lee had been bleeding internally into his chest cavity and that three litres of blood had to be “evacuated” as surgeons tried to repair a stab wound to his heart. That blood loss, she testified, was the official cause of his death.

Bellis testified that it was “a very large, multi-branched wound” and it was not clear if it was created by a single stab or many — explaining a person moving while being stabbed or a blade being retracted and reinserted could have caused the kind of damage she saw to Lee’s heart.

On the stand, Bellis was asked to look at two pairs of scissors seized from the younger of the girls on trial — the girl, 14 at the time of the alleged murder, that the Crown alleges is responsible for the fatal stab wound.

The Crown argued Friday that the younger girl on trial used a knife in the final wave of the attack on Lee in the parkette, stabbing him in the chest as he fell forward. The court has seen several images of what the Crown alleges could be a sharp object being held or picked up by the girl, but only the scissors were seized. No other sharp objects were found on any of the girls when they were arrested, the court earlier heard.

The doctor was asked whether either pair of scissors could have caused the wound.

“I think it’s possible but I think it’s not very likely,” Bellis said.

She gave additional evidence, entered Friday as an agreed statement of facts, that wounds created by scissors “often (but not necessarily always)” leave a characteristic mark caused by the two blades being closed together or by both blades being open. A single blade from a pair of scissors may not cause that kind of mark, the statement said.

Eight girls in total were arrested in 2022 and charged with second-degree murder. Two face a jury trial in May — one on a charge of manslaughter and the other for second-degree murder. The four remaining girls pleaded guilty to lesser charges and have since been sentenced.

The trial continues Monday.