Eight teen girls in Toronto are facing murder charges after an alleged swarming attack. What happened?

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Jordan Police press releases are, by and large, routine. Organizations like the Toronto Police issue several hundred, if not thousands of these things per year. And yes, dozens of them deal with murders. Most of them, the vast majority of them do not. They cover things like missing persons, or neighborhood warnings, or property crimes and street closures. So if you’re a crime reporter or even just someone who follows crime news, it is rare one of these will make you do a double take. Eight teenage girls have been arrested and charged with second degree murder after investigators say a 59 year old man living in Toronto’s shelter system was stabbed in the downtown core. As more details on this story became clear, it was obvious that Toronto was dealing with a very unusual crime. I don’t say this often about stories, but this one is kind of shocking. These eight females range in age from 13 to 16, three of them being 13, three of them being 14, and two of them being 16 years of age. The victim, police say, was swarmed by a pack of teen girls and arrests were made and charges were laid. And since then, dribs and drabs of information, but nothing concrete. And with every new fact, the crime becomes more mysterious and more disturbing. What happened just after midnight on December 18 in downtown Toronto? What happened in the hours leading up to it? What do we know about the victim and what do we know about his alleged killers? What don’t we know? When might we find out? How rare is the sort of crime police say happened here? I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Jennifer Pagliaro is a crime reporter at the Toronto Star. That means she reads hundreds, thousands of police press releases a year.

Jordan Jennifer?

Jennifer Pagliaro Yeah, I mean, they mostly have taken over my inbox. How did you hear about this story? Was this from a police press release? Did you see it on social media? Let’s rewind to like, December 18, I guess.

Jordan Yeah. So we didn’t actually hear about this until like, several days later, because what had happened is it sort of came through in that really busy pre Christmas period as an assault and a homicide press release hadn’t gone out. I always read the homicide press releases. Luckily, we live in a city where there still aren’t so many homicides that you can’t pay attention to each one. And later, when we saw a press advisory come out that said there was going to be a press conference on this case, that sort of tipped me off that something weird was going on. The police don’t always have a press conference for every event, as you can imagine. That would take up most of their time. That’s why they do the press releases. But the fact that they were choosing to speak to it usually signals that something else significant is going on. And I was actually off that day. And so I look at my email like a lot of people do when they’re trying to start vacation, but I was like, you know what? I’ll let this go. And then I saw the press release come out saying what had happened. It really came out of left field. And I remember calling my boss and saying, hey, this press release. And he looked at it and we were both like, oh, my God. So suffice to say, I was not on vacation that day anymore.

Jordan This is sort of an unprecedented story. What was your very first reaction reading that press release? You have covered, as I mentioned, a lot of crime in Toronto. A lot of murders as well.

Jennifer Pagliaro Yeah, it’s interesting because I’ve actually been paying particular attention to news releases that come through that involve teenagers.

Jordan Why is that?

Jennifer Pagliaro Well, it’s interesting because we’ve actually talked on the show about the uptick in teens being involved in carjackings, for example. That’s like a new trend where young people are getting involved in different types of crimes. And so I’ve actually been sort of tuned in when these press releases come across my desk. But as soon as I looked at this one, a few things stand out. It is incredibly rare for teenage girls to be arrested. It’s even more rare for them to be accused of a violent crime and basically unheard of for them to be accused of homicide, especially homicide of seemingly a total stranger. We understand that these girls are also suspected in a string of attacks leading up to the person that they allegedly killed. You just don’t see this. You don’t see it in Toronto. You don’t really see it in Canada, and I don’t think you really see it in North America. And I think that’s why it’s sort of taken the story, sort of take it on a life of its own.

Jordan I’ve personally never seen it, and I can’t find a colleague that has. We’re going to talk about the accused teen girls in a minute and get into what we have and haven’t found out since the initial release. But first, we’ve also learned a lot since then about the victim here. Can you tell me who he was?

Jennifer Pagliaro Yeah, so the person who was killed in this attack is a man named Ken Lee, and he was 59 years old at the time of his murder. What we have learned about him is that he was experiencing homelessness at the time that he was killed. We believe that he was outside with a companion. We’re not sure too much. We think that they may have been drinking outside, he and his friend. And we know that he had gone from shelter to shelter. He was known to homeless advocates in the city. They actually had a memorial for him recently at the homeless memorial that’s near the Eaton Center. And his family who posted on a GoFundMe page, described him as a really kind and beloved son and brother, and it’s incredibly sad. They said that he had fallen on what they called bad luck, and he was sort of determined to get back on his feet himself. And that can be really hard for families when you know that your family member is struggling, especially with housing. And then to learn that this happened to him, I imagine fairly devastating. We’ve kind of danced around it so far, but maybe you could tell me what we know about the attack itself.

Jordan Do we know why he was attacked? How did the attack happen? Where that stuff?

Jennifer Pagliaro Yeah. So this was late at night in December. And what we understand is that police, allege these teen girls, may have attacked or tried to attack several people along the TTC line. One. So that’s going down the university side in sort of that bottom part of the u leading up to Union Station. And then what we know is that Ken Lee, his companion, and these girls encountered each other in the York University intersection, if people can picture that, close to the Union Station entrance there. And what we know is that police believe, and this hasn’t been proven in court yet, that the girls may have engaged with Mr. Lee’s friend because he had alcohol on him that they may have wanted, and then some kind of altercation ensues. Police are calling that a swarming attack, and that there were eight teen girls that police later located nearby, and they were arrested and brought to a station downtown. Apparently, there are more witnesses to the attack, apparently bystanders, according to the police, actually flagged down EMS personnel who were able to respond. But once they responded, they realized that not only had Ken been assaulted, but he had apparently also been stabbed. And so he was transported to hospital, but he unfortunately died there. And now all eight of those girls are facing second degree murder charges. What do we know about this group of girls, if anything?

Jordan Yeah, so this is such an interesting and difficult to report case. Because the girls are all under the age of 18. There’s very little that we can do to identify them. That’s by law. But what police have said is that once they announced the arrest, they said that they believe the girls met on social media. We don’t know how far prior to this alleged attack that they may have met. We’re not sure which social network they may have met on. Obviously, there are many that are popular with teenagers, and we do know that they don’t know each other from school. Say they apparently live all across Toronto and the GTA. So this isn’t a case of the fact that they were friends from school or from a local neighborhood interaction. So we’re not exactly sure how they all came to be downtown together that night. Also very crucially, they are aged 13 to 16. I think what makes this even more unusual is that the majority of them are 13 and 14, which again, is just incredibly young for something like this to have happened.

Jordan You mentioned earlier, and you’ve also talked to experts and reported in your stories that this is incredibly rare. What do experts say about first of all, I guess, why this is so rare, but also how it can happen. I think this is the thing that, let’s face it, the reason that me and you are talking today and that this story has grabbed everybody’s attention. Yeah, I mean, some of it is kind of common sense. Like, teenage boys are more at risk of being involved in violent crime. They’re more likely to be recruited into gang activity. Those are just sort of historical stereotypes, right?

Jennifer Pagliaro It’s not that girls are not capable of violence. It’s just in, like, modern North American society, you don’t really see it. It’s not that girls don’t get in fights, but when I have seen it happen or read about it happening is they often may perpetrate violence against each other. So, like teen girl on teen girl violence, that does happen. There is, of course, a lot of teen bullying that happens with young girls, especially with the advent of social media. But you just really don’t see homicide, and especially against an adult and especially against a stranger. And so because there isn’t a lot of precedent for this, there aren’t really a lot of studies to suggest why something like this happens. We’ve seen swarming attacks in Toronto in the past. Those were typically teenage boys. And in this case, police think it may have been motivated by alcohol, in that Lee’s companion had something that they wanted. But to go to these lengths, we still don’t have any idea whether any substances were involved prior to the attack. That could obviously be a factor.

Jordan And again, why they met up downtown. What was their purpose for being there, given that they were allegedly involved in so many violent encounters?

Jennifer Pagliaro Honestly, those are open questions. And honestly, it’s baffling to me.

Jordan I don’t want to put words in your mouth at all, but just from the things you’ve kind of told me as we talk here, they connected on the Internet and eventually allegedly murdered this man. But you also mentioned that there were encounters leading up to that.

Jennifer Pagliaro It suggests that they came downtown with a purpose to hurt people. I’m sure that has to be one of the most pressing questions that the police have. It’s difficult to know. I think that it’s common these days, actually, for teenagers to connect with people they don’t know on the Internet. People their age. And I don’t know how often that sort of materializes in meeting in person. Again, these girls could have known each other for some time on the Internet. We don’t have that information yet, but I imagine that would become part of a criminal trial. Right. And just going over the story with my editors, like, was there a concert downtown they would have been interested in or some event that would draw teenage girls to the downtown core? Because also, parents that I speak to, typically you don’t often see unsupervised 13 year olds downtown at that hour, but we also don’t know what their life circumstances were like, and we can’t really place blame on anyone at this point. It really allows the mind to wander, and I’m really looking forward to learning more information. And again, it’s going to be so tricky what we can and can’t share, but obviously we’re going to share everything that we’re legally allowed to.

Jordan What is the status of the accused right now? Where are they and when are they due back in court? When might we learn more about what happened?

Jennifer Pagliaro Yeah, so one of the eight girls has had a bail hearing, and she is actually out on bail. Her bail was posted at $9,500, and she has two sureties. So people that sort of put their names forward to essentially be guardians for her and ensure that she’s following the bail rules. She is allowed to attend school, but otherwise she’s not allowed to leave home without one of those. Sureties. And the other seven girls remain in custody. One of those girls has a bail hearing this week, actually, and the other girls are looking to schedule a bail hearing. And there is a third girl who has a bail hearing scheduled later this month.

Jordan Would we learn you mentioned one of them has already had a bail hearing. Would we learn anything more at those bail hearings or because of the ages of these girls and the fact that they are protected, will we just not learn much at all until this actually gets in court for a trial?

Jennifer Pagliaro Yeah, so the way that this works, and there’s sort of two layers here. There’s sort of standard court procedure, and then there’s also court procedure when it involves a young person. So with all bail hearings, they do present information in order to argue for and against bail. And you can access that information, but it can’t be published. There’s a publication ban on it, so it may be possible to report some of that information after a trial is concluded. There’s another wrinkle here, which is that as reporters, we’ve actually had an incredibly difficult time accessing even basic information in this case. I still don’t even have a court file number for this case, which I believe infringes on my right to access an open court. So actually, last week, there were lawyers representing several media organizations arguing in front of a judge to access information in the court file, and we’re actually waiting on a decision. My purpose with that is to personally be able to access all of that information so that when I can report it, I can do the best job putting that in context. Surely the police must understand that there’s going to be such an intense level of scrutiny for this case.

Jordan I mean, it seems like they got that from the beginning to your point by the way they handled the press release and a press conference right then. So I guess what do they have to gain by trying to keep this information under wraps? Like, if there was one story that the interest in it is not going away in Toronto this year, it’s probably this one.

Jennifer Pagliaro Yeah. So there’s two things going on. I’ll speak to the court process. First, so the reason why we don’t have access to basic information is, I believe, because the Court is trying to uphold sort of the major part of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which is ensuring that young people’s privacy is protected. Right. And the reason why the Youth Criminal Justice Act is written that way is because there is a greater emphasis on restorative justice when it comes to young people that perhaps a 13 year old can be, for example, rehabilitated and should have the right to live their adult lives without the burden of a criminal record hanging over them. I actually think all media accept those principles. I personally do. I’ve done a lot of research, and I believe that there is very good reason for those rules. However, there are publication bans in place. A publication ban basically means that I, as a reporter, cannot report those details without facing my own legal scrutiny. And I think what’s happening here is the Court is trying to add an additional layer that it doesn’t need, because as reporters from credible media outlets, we would never be releasing the identity of those girls, not only because it breaks the law, but because ethically, as journalists, we uphold the principles in that act. I do believe in restorative justice for young people. And the second issue with the police is interesting. They put out a press release recently saying that they were looking for victims and witnesses of additional attacks on the subway. They believe perpetrated by a group of teenage girls. And when I went to ask them if it was the same girls that were charged in Kenley’s murder, they refused to tell me. And I find that really challenging. We were able to write that story because my colleague Betsy Powell had a police source that confirmed that police suspect it is the same girls who murdered Ken Lee, allegedly. But I don’t know why police are so hesitant to connect these cases when it’s so obviously the same group of girls. Again, you don’t often see a group of teenage girls allegedly committing violent acts. And so I think there is a lot of hesitation on this case because the rules around Youth criminal justice are so strict. I wish that those involved in law enforcement would have more faith in the media, but I can only argue for myself that I am doing my best to uphold the law and allow these girls a fair trial while also trying to do my job. And I think people have a very strong interest in this case, and I hope to be able to report more. Jennifer, thank you for all this. I’ll ask you one more question, and I guess, first of all, we’ll just wait for the court ruling to figure out what you can report and when. But just like I said at the beginning, you’ve covered a lot of crime. I know you take it really seriously. I know you have a lot of empathy.

Jordan Where is your head at on this? It’s heartbreaking and strange.

Jennifer Pagliaro Yeah, I mean, my head is in a million different places. First and foremost, you can’t imagine, and I can’t imagine what it’s like to be the family of Kenley who are, as I said earlier, obviously devastated. But I think you also have to think about the girls and their family. This is for sure life altering for all of them. And I think this case is really going to test our modern justice system. People need to understand what happened, why it happened, and to be able to see that process play out. And so I hope to be a part of that. My job is to sort of be the stand in for everyone to go to court and to listen to the reasons for and against bail and to sit through the trial and to gather that information and to try to make sense of it. It’s a tough one. It is.

Jordan Again, I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this. Jennifer, as always, thank you for this and thank you for fighting the good fight to tell us what happened.

Jennifer Pagliaro Thanks, Jordan. Thanks for having me.

Jordan Jennifer Pagliaro, crime reporter at the Toronto Star. That was the big story. You can find more at The Big Storypodcast. CA you can, of course, talk to us anytime on Twitter, The Big Story. FPN you can email us hello at The bigstory podcast. CA and as always, call us 416-935-5935. I’m saving some of the voicemails you guys have sent us. We’re going to release a little clip show for you in a little bit. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.