Man found guilty of mother's murder

Dallas Ly claimed killing was in reaction to years of abuse and resulted in PTSD

- JACQUES GALLANT

Dallas Ly acknowledged he stabbed and decapitated his mother during a confrontation in their Leslieville home in March 2022, but wanted people to believe it was not murder.

He was adamant he never intended to kill Tien Ly, but was reacting to violence from the woman he said abused him throughout his childhood.

Ajury rejected that and found him guilty of second-degree murder.

The jury, which started deliberating Tuesday afternoon, returned its verdict Wednesday. Ly faces an automatic life sentence.

One of Ly’s lawyers, Jessyca Greenwood, had urged the jury in her closing arguments last week to accept Ly’s testimony.

A photo of Ly’s back entered as an exhibit showed numerous red marks and scarring, which he said was caused by his mother hitting him with a bamboo back-scratcher and scraping it across his body, usually when he had done poorly at school.

Ly testified that just prior to the killing, he had declared to his 46-year-old mother that he was moving out to live with an aunt. He said his mother threatened to kill them both as she punched him. He then stabbed her with a hunting knife. 

“His response was completely reactionary, a result of a lifetime of abuse, the result of provocation at the hands of his mother,” Greenwood told the jury, asking that they find her client not guilty of murder.

Once the then-21-year-old Ly realized what he had done, he placed his mother’s dismembered body in a grocery buggy and dumped it on the side of the road. He tried unsuccessfully to flee the country, before going to Hamilton and posing as a Chinese refugee. He later returned to Toronto where he was arrested.