A 16-year-old who killed her mother’s ex-boyfriend had no recollection of stabbing him, she said in court, during a week-long trial in December.
At the time, the Whitehorse teen plead guilty to manslaughter.
Her identity is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
The trial’s psychiatric assessment of the girl said she had no mental disorders or evidence of previous psychotic events.
But she did enter a “dissociative state” and was therefore not responsible for her own actions, psychiatrist Kulwant Riar testified.
While Judge John Faulkner questioned these conclusions, he was unable to prove them otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It is like reading a book with the final chapter missing,” said Faulkner.
The teenager was convicted of manslaughter on Thursday morning.
The court did not receive any evidence that the teen was abused by her mother’s ex-boyfriend.
She, her brother and mother were simply sick of him staying at their home, they testified.
He was unemployed for most of the five years he lived with them and contributed nothing to the household.
He ignored and refused multiple eviction notices and was described as “mean-spirited.”
The girl’s mother, who suffered from alcoholism, supported him.
The house they shared was unkempt.
The teen told the court that she remembered him coming into the kitchen early on the morning of August 8, 2009.
She was getting herself a glass of juice.
The kitchen was small and the middle-aged man made her angry by invading her personal space, she said.
While she never denied it, she has no memory of getting a knife and stabbing him, she said. Her only recollections are of turning around and then falling under his weight as he collapsed on top of her, she said.
The teen has no criminal record and five months after her arrest she was released into the care of an ex-police officer and was permitted to return to school.
Since the incident, she has gone from just passing her high school courses, to being an honour-roll student.
She has been accepted to university and hopes to become a nurse.
No date has been set for her sentencing hearing. (Roxanne Stasyszyn)