A family friend of a girl found dead in a Burnaby park six years ago testified at the murder trial of Ibrahim Ali in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver Monday.
Ali has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of a 13-year-old girl whose body was found in Central Park on July 19, 2017, less than two hours after her family reported her missing.
Ali has pleaded not guilty.
The victim cannot be identified because of a publication ban.
On the day the girl went missing, her mother had been visiting a friend, Ji Ping (Colleen) Dong, at Dong’s home in Langley.
Dong told the jury Monday that, when the girl’s mother returned home, the girl was nowhere to be found.
During “numerous” phone calls on the night of July 18, 2017, and into the early morning hours of the next day, Dong said she could hear her friend becoming increasingly frantic about her missing daughter.
“At the beginning she was still calm, but towards the end you could hear her crying voice,” said Dong, speaking through a Mandarin interpreter. “She was saying in a crying voice, ‘I can’t find her. I can’t find her.’ She was very worried.”
Dong eventually came out to Burnaby to support her friend on the night of the tragedy.
Dong said police told the family at about 11 p.m. on July 18, 2017, that the young teen’s cell phone had been found in Central Park, but they weren’t told about the girl’s body being discovered until about 6 a.m. the following day.
According to police testimony earlier in the trial, the girl’s body had been found hours earlier, at about 1 a.m. on July 19, 2017.
Dong first met the slain girl’s mom in 2000, when their two older children were taking swimming lessons together.
The two moms were friends by the time the girl was born.
Dong is expected to return to the stand tomorrow for cross-examination.
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