Eight teenage girls who appear to have met on social media have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of a 59-year-old man who was stabbed to death in downtown Toronto.
Police claim the girls attacked and stabbed the man early Sunday morning in a square near the main train station in Canada’s largest city. Three of the girls are 13, three are 14 and two are 16, police said on Tuesday.
Police have not named the victim, but at a news conference, Toronto Homicide Dept. Terry Browne said the man had recently moved into the city’s homeless shelter system.
“He has a very supportive family in the area so I wouldn’t necessarily call him homeless, maybe only recently because of some bad luck,” Browne said.
Browne said officers responded to a call downtown around midnight on December 18 after bystanders urged paramedics to report a man suffering from “stab wounds.”
Police say the girls attacked and stabbed the victim after an altercation. The man was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, but died shortly afterwards.
Officers arrested the girls nearby after questioning witnesses and recovered a number of weapons at the scene. None of the suspects can be identified under Canada’s Juvenile Justice Act.
Browne said investigators believe those involved in the attack met on social media and came from different parts of the city, but it’s still unclear why they met that evening.
“I wouldn’t call them a gang at this point, but what [is] alleged to have taken place that evening would be consistent with what we traditionally call crushing,” Browne said.
Three of the suspects had previous “contact” with police, Brown said, and the other five had no prior interactions with police.
The suspects appeared in court on Sunday and are scheduled to appear in court again on December 29.