The guilty verdict in the trial of a man accused of sexually assaulting and killing a 13-year-old Burnaby girl was the "best possible outcome" given the confines of the Canadian justice system, according to the girl’s brother.
"To (my sister), if she is listening now, I want to tell her that we love her, we miss her and nothing will ever fill the void that she left when she was so brutally and suddenly torn from us," he said. "But we hope that she can find some modicum of peace now, knowing that we caught the monster that did this and found him guilty for his heinous crimes."
A jury found Ibrahim Ali, 33, guilty Friday of first-degree murder in the death of the girl, whose partially naked body was found in Burnaby’s Central Park just after 1 a.m. on July 19, 2017, less than two hours after her family reported her missing.
The girl cannot be identified because of a publication ban.
The brother made the statement outside of the Vancouver Law Courts Tuesday afternoon.
He thanked the jury, Crown counsel, police and victim services.
He also thanked those responsible for getting surveillance and a police presence into Central Park.
"Something that was not present at the time of (my sister's) incident but will now go on to prevent future children from being harmed there," he said
The last contact the brother had with his sister, who was 11 years younger than him, was through a series of Harry Potter-themed WeChat messages shortly after 7 p.m. on July 18, 2017.
He did not know those would be the last words he ever shared with her.
"This is something that is going to haunt me daily and will probably continue to do so till my dying day," he said Tuesday.
The brother testified at Ali's eight-month trial in August, saying he and his sister had spent time during her last Chinese New Year playing video games and watching movies at their mother's Central Park apartment before he returned to China.
"There isn't a day that goes by that my mother does not reminisce on something that she did, something that she liked to eat or something that she wanted to do," said the brother. "She lives in a hell of memories with ghosts of my sister at every corner."
Toward the end of his Crown testimony in August, the brother was visibly shaken when he was shown an autopsy photo of his younger sister.
The Crown's theory, which the jury accepted, was that Ali attacked the girl on a trail in Central Park, dragged her into the forest and strangled her to death while sexually assaulting her.
Central to the Crown's case was that Ali's semen was found inside the girl.
The defence, however, suggested she and Ali had had sex sometime earlier outside of the the park and someone else had killed her and dumped her body where it was found.
The brother had harsh words for the defence team, saying the family would be making formal complaints.
"The defence of someone accused of the crime is never easy, but I am sure there are ways to approach it without re-victimizing and re-traumatizing the surviving family and friends of the victim, and yet this is exactly what this defence chose to do," the brother said. "They chose to drag (my sister's) name through the mud."
Ali's trial concluded Friday but hearings on matters arising from the case continue.
He is not expected to be sentenced until sometime in the New Year.
Crown and defence will meet on Jan. 15 to set dates.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
Email [email protected]
