Girl guilty of killing senior

By The Canadian Press
Wed. Jan 20 - 4:46 AM

SAINT JOHN, N.B. — A teenage girl who stabbed an elderly man in the neck and left him to die was found guilty Tuesday of second-degree murder.

After a jury announced its verdict, the baby-faced teen turned to her family and mouthed, "I love you, I’m sorry," her eyes red and brimming with tears.

The 16-year-old’s family sat silently as the verdict was read. But when Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Hugh McLellan left the courtroom, her mother sobbed into the shoulder of a relative, her body heaving with emotion.

Minutes later, the mother was carried out on a stretcher seemingly unconscious as her family cried outside court.The teenage girl, who took latex gloves and a knife to the home of Frank Tonge, 78, was charged with first-degree murder after Tonge was found dead, his body slumped over a toilet in a pool of blood in his home in Damascus, northeast of Saint John, in June.

The jury deliberated for 15 hours, returning with a guilty verdict on the lesser offence of second-degree murder. First-degree murder is one that is planned and deliberate while second-degree murder involves an attack that a person knows will likely result in death.

The teen, who can’t be named, has been on trial since last Tuesday. During the proceedings, more than two hours of taped questioning of the girl by police was played for the seven women and five men of the jury. During the questioning, the girl admitted she killed Tonge on June 5.

The Crown and defence agreed that the girl stuck the knife in Tonge’s neck while they stood in the entrance to his bedroom, then fled on foot, leaving a trail of evidence behind her.

Under police questioning, she called the victim a "bad man" and said she kept going to his house for two years, even though he was "gross," because he supplied her with marijuana and without it she couldn’t be happy.

"I was done with his (expletive), done getting caught in his trap. He set me up," the girl told police. "All I thought about was everything that’s happened to me, everything he’s done. He’s ruined a great share of my life . . . . I would rather rot in jail than have any more of my friends or kids in general get touched."

From: http://thechronicleherald.ca/Canada/1163255.html