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The judge called the attack on 59-year-old Lee “vicious and cowardly” and found that the girl, who sat silently before him in a sixth-floor pc28����courtroom, had been “central to the physical assault” but did not wield the knife nor was she the one who stabbed Lee — ultimately leading to his death.

“The crime shocked the city,” Rose said.

But in siding with her defence counsel, Rose acknowledged the significant time the girl had already spent in pre-sentence custody — 243 days — as well as the fact she was strip-searched on seven occasions while in detention, including three times illegally — against a court order. Rose quoted the bail judge who made that order, Justice Maria Sirivar, who earlier called those searches “inhumane.”

The decision offers the first glimpse of how the court weighs the seriousness of the charges against the accused in a deadly and headline-grabbing incident with their treatment while in custody — which has drawn attention and criticism, both inside and outside the courtroom — as well as their personal circumstances.

In sentencing the girl, the judge also spent time outlining key differences in the legal considerations for sentencing youth — whose brains are not yet fully developed — compared to adults.

The Crown has alleged that on December 18, 2022 eight girls, ages 13 to 16, swarmed Lee in a parkette at University Avenue and Front Street after he came to the defence of his female companion. All of the girls were initially charged with second-degree murder.

The girl who was sentenced Monday was one of four girls who have entered guilty pleas in the case. The four other girls are headed to jury trials in the Superior Court of Justice next year.

All of the girls’ identities are protected by a publication ban under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which promotes the rehabilitation of young people.

Reading his decision, the judge spelled out the forces working for and against the young girl.

She was found to have been drinking and smoking marijuana throughout the evening and participated in, what the judge called, escalating “brute” and “feral” behaviour on the TTC as the group of girls headed south on Line 1 toward Union Station.

That behaviour, the judge said, included several altercations with other passengers in which the girl sentenced Monday sprayed water on one woman on board the train, while hitting and spitting on women at St. Andrew station.

The group of girls would collide with Lee and his friend shortly after midnight. The pair — both experiencing homelessness — had met up in the parkette near one of the city’s temporary emergency shelters. Some of the girls attempted to steal alcohol from Lee’s companion and he came to her defence, according to agreed statements of fact entered in the case.

The girl facing sentencing at times chased, hit, grabbed, kicked and spit on Lee during the attack, Rose found, after the Crown presented video surveillance footage of that night.

During the third and final wave of the attack, the girl jumped onto a planter and with a pair of vice grips in her right hand, the judge said, and ”(pummelled)” Lee in his upper body with it.

The girl was arrested with the vice grips, a taser as well as pepper spray.

The judge summarized victim impact statements provided by Lee’s family at an earlier sentencing hearing, saying he was a “shining light” to them and that his death “left his family in deep pain.”

Rose also considered evidence about the girl’s own mental health and history, including that she had no prior criminal record.

The girl, the court heard, first tried marijuana at age 11 and was smoking it daily at the time of the crime. She had an “aggressive streak” the court heard and had been known to have temper tantrums during which objects were thrown.

The judge acknowledged an apology letter written by the girl in which she expressed regret for her involvement and described her own conduct as “outrageous.”

“She is a vulnerable youth with many strengths,” the judge concluded.

“Accountability must reflect the moral culpability of the young person,” he said in his decision, spending time to cite research about youth having “diminished” blameworthiness for their crimes because of their not yet fully developed brains.

A guilty plea, he said, is a major factor in assessing accountability. He also spelled out how the concept of general deterrence — imposing penalties for adults to deter other people from committing the same offence — has no place in the youth system, where the focus is on the individual and their rehabilitation, not the general public.

There are no mandatory minimum sentences for youth charged with manslaughter. The maximum sentence is three years.

The Crown was seeking a maximum three-year sentence, two of those years to be served in custody, less the time the girl spent in pre-sentence custody, with the final year under a supervision order.

The girl’s defence lawyer Leo Adler, speaking to reporters outside the courthouse after the sentence, said his client “sincerely” regrets what happened and has apologized to Lee’s family, as did he, on her behalf.

“She had just turned 13 when this occurred. And if it speaks to anything, it speaks to the difficulty of peer pressure, the difficulty of not going along,” he said.

“And I’m glad that the judge also made a point of saying this was not something that was deliberate. It is not as if these girls decided, ‘Let’s go find a victim and take (them) out.’”

For Lee’s family, the loss has been unimaginable.

Lee, his sister remembered in a victim impact statement earlier read in court, was the kind of uncle you could look up to — bonding with his nieces and nephew over pizza, chocolate milk and Monopoly. He struck out on his own, later in life, his sister, Helen Shum, said, to learn to be more independent. Leaving his social safety nets, his family believed then, was a brave choice. They were proud of him.

“Our family will never be whole again,” she said. “No words can ever fully express the never-ending pain and emptiness due to the death of my only sibling.”