MANDEL: Swarming girl who pleaded to manslaughter still doesn’t get it

She is still frighteningly clueless.

Even now, even after watching and rewatching the horrific video of her part in the senseless swarming attack on Kenneth Lee, where she’s enthusiastically hitting, punching and stomping on the vulnerable man — practically doing everything but actually delivering the fatal knife wound — the pig-tailed teen still has no remorse.

Crown attorney Sarah De Filippis says it’s shocking how the girl, who was one of the “ringleaders” who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, still minimizes her role to an almost “ludicrous degree” — and that’s putting it kindly.

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“She thought Mr. Lee was a piece of s—,” the prosecutor said the now 16-year-old reported in her psychological assessment. “She minimizes her involvement (saying) ‘I have no guilt. I didn’t do anything serious. I had nothing to do with what caused his death.”

How cold and callous can she be?

Lee, 59, was viciously knifed to death after midnight on Dec. 18, 2022, when the homeless man was attacked by a swarm of girls in a parkette near University Ave. and Front St.

The eight teens, who ranged in age from 13 to 16 and can’t be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, were originally charged with second-degree murder. Four of the girls have pleaded guilty — three to manslaughter and one to assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon. The other four have pleaded not guilty and are going to trial next year.

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Back in custody after being charged with new offences, this girl’s sentencing hearing Thursday first heard emotional victim impact statements from Lee’s family. Then the prosecutor played the security footage of the attack for Justice David Rose, focussing on her feral actions during the three-and-a-half-minute swarming by the terrifying pack.

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Or as the shelter worker who ultimately intervened would later describe it: “A bunch of wolves on top of a piece of meat.”

The girl, 14 at the time, had earlier that night joined up with the marauding teens creating mayhem on the subway and she’d hit a woman outside the TTC’s St. Andrews subway station. She later indirectly “instigated” the swarming, De Filippis said, when she stole a bottle of booze from a homeless woman in the parkette in what was “part of a pattern of unprovoked violence.”

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When Lee stepped in to protect his friend, the angry mob descended on him.

It’s difficult to watch as these girls show no mercy to the slight man — a beloved son, brother and uncle who was working on his personal issues and hoping to return home for Christmas with his new goal of “helping people.”

This teen wasn’t the first to pounce on Lee, but she joined in quickly, De Filippis said, continually hitting him with her white shopping bag of ice — even when he temporarily managed to get away and flee to the road.

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When the girls converged on him from all angles and cornered him beside a low walled concrete planter, she can be seen pulling Lee down to the pavement and kneeing him repeatedly. “And even after he’s on the ground and adults are breaking it off, she’s still stomping on his head,” De Filippis said.

“She was one of the most violent in the group. She was dedicated to this attack and she was relentless, even to the last minutes when he was crumpled on the ground.”

While the maximum youth sentence is three years, with credit for pre-sentence custody, prosecutors are asking for her to serve 20 months in an open custody facility. And that might be reduced still further after her lawyer Anne Marie Morphew plans to argue the teen, like some of her co-accused, was forced to undergo naked strip searches while in custody.

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Despite what her lawyer may request when the hearing continues Friday, De Filippis insisted probation is not an appropriate alternative to custody to hold her accountable.

Not that the Crown isn’t sympathetic to this girl’s rough life: apprehended at birth by child protection, she was eventually taken in by her grandmother who loves her “ferociously” but the teen has had few supports as she struggles with a learning disability and a propensity to shoplift.

“She seems to be slipping through the cracks all the way along,” the judge noted.

And that’s tragic — but it still doesn’t explain away what she did to that poor, defenceless man.

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