Cellphone records presented at the Ibrahim Ali murder trial this week hinted at a heartbreaking image of a mother desperate to contact her missing 13-year-old daughter in the hours before she was found dead in a Burnaby Park in July 2017.
David Mak, an expert in Rogers Communications cellphone services, took the witness stand at the B.C. Supreme Court trial in Vancouver Friday.
Ali, 33, is on trial for first-degree murder in the death of a girl whose body was found in Central Park on July 19, 2017.
He has pleaded not guilty.
The victim cannot be identified because of a publication ban.
Crown prosecutor Daniel Porte took Mak through cellphone information obtained by police via a search warrant.
The report zeroed in on one phone number registered to the victim’s mother, who was the subscriber for two Rogers cellphones, according to the records.
On July 18, 2017, the night the young teen was reported missing to police, one of those phones made 25 calls in less than three hours to the other phone, according the cellphone records.
“None of those calls were answered,” Mak told the court.
In her opening statement in April, Crown prosecutor Isobel Keeley said the Crown expected the girl's mother to testify that she had tried to call her daughter "repeatedly" the night she went missing but got no answer.
The girl's mother has not yet taken the stand, and Mak noted the cellphone information only shows who the subscriber of a phone is, not who is using it.
Earlier in the trial, a Burnaby RCMP officer told the court that "pinging" the girl's cellphone had led them to her body.
Her phone and a pink wallet were found first beside a trail in the southeast section of the park; a police dog team then found her body.
Mak's testimony continues.
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