The Chinese mother of a 13-year-old girl who was found dead in a Burnaby, B.C., park six years ago has taken the witness stand at the murder trial of her accused killer. Media wait outside B.C. Supreme Court, in Vancouver, B.C., on Tuesday, June 2, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
VANCOUVER – The Chinese mother of a 13-year-old girl found dead in a Burnaby, B.C., park six years ago has taken the witness stand at the murder trial of her accused killer.
The mother, who cannot be named under the terms of a publication ban on the girls’ identity, broke down in tears as she talked about the meaning of her daughter’s name in Chinese, a reference to the light rain that was falling on the day she was born.
The woman repeatedly wept at the mention of the girl’s name during the British Columbia Supreme Court trial of Ibrahim Ali on Wednesday.
The mother, testifying in Mandarin through an interpreter, says she would take her daughter skating and swimming, and the girl would spend summer afternoons looking at her cellphone or doing crafts.
She was also learning to play the flute and would sometimes go jogging.
The girl’s body was found in Burnaby’s Central Park in the early hours of July 19, 2017, and Ali pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the case earlier this year.
“Sometimes she’d go out to have fun with friends but she’d always tell me where she was going,” the mother said of her daughter.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 23, 2023.
