There were moments of high tension in a Vancouver courtroom Friday, as the friend of a murdered teen girl faced cross-examination by lawyers for her accused killer.
Ibrahim Ali has pleaded not guilty to the July 2017 killing. The identities of both the witness and the victim are covered by a publication ban.
Friday’s proceedings saw a friend of the victim return to the stand to face questioning from defence counsel Kevin McCullough, who took aim at her credibility on several fronts — pressing how well she really knew the girl.
Matters came to a head at one point, when Crown prosecutors rose to take issue with McCullough’s line of questioning.
“It’s cross examination, Mr. Justice. I’m calling the witness a liar,” McCullough response.
That drew a caution from B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lance Bernard, who warned defence to be respectful and not to make accusations of the witness.
On Thursday, the witness testified that she never saw her friend drink alcohol and do drugs, and that the teen did not have a boyfriend or interest in boys. She described the victim as a normal school girl who liked math and cartoons.
On Friday, McCullough pushed back against that testimony.
“She told you she tried to kill herself because her parents were divorcing and she wasn’t successful,” McCullough put to the witness, drawing an objection from Crown.
McCullough went on to question the witness about her statement to police following the murder.
In that statement, she told investigators her friend didn’t like her mother, would ride the SkyTrain to kill time because she didn’t want to go home, and liked to draw pictures of people bleeding from their mouth, the court heard.
Defence also told the court the victim did, in fact, have a boyfriend who had also given a statement to police.
The witness responded that she’d never heard of the boy.
Crown’s theory is that Ali grabbed the victim in Burnaby’s Central Park and fatally strangled her in the course of sexually assaulting her on July 18, 2017.
Defence has yet to lay out its case in a trial that could last up to three months.
-With files from Rumina Daya