New trial date set for man accused of killing B.C. teen Marissa Shen
A new trial date has been set for a man accused of killing a 13-year-old girl in Burnaby nearly six years ago.
Marissa Shen was last seen alive on July 18, 2017, at a local Tim Hortons. Five hours after that sighting, her body was found in Burnaby's Central Park.
Ibrahim Ali was arrested more than a year later and charged with first-degree murder.
The trial had already been postponed twice by the time it was slated to begin in January, only to be rescheduled once more due to a large number of pre-trial applications, according to the B.C. Prosecution Service.
However, jury selection is now underway at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, and the BCPS confirmed that the trial is scheduled to begin on April 5.
B.C.'s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has described the case as the biggest it has worked on in its history.
According to the RCMP, there were initially 2,000 persons of interest in the case, and Ali did not become a suspect until two weeks before his arrest.
Police have not revealed what evidence put him on their radar.
Ali, a Syrian national who arrived in Canada just a few months before the killing, was 28 years old at the time of Shen's death and has no previous criminal record.
Heated protests have erupted outside the court house during a number of his previous court appearances, with some individuals seemingly focused on turning Shen’s death into a larger debate about Canada’s immigration system.
Ali has been in Custody since his arrest in 2018.
The trial is expected to run through to June 30.
With files from CTV Vancouver’s Lisa Steacy.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
President Joe Biden calls Japan and India 'xenophobic' nations that do not welcome immigrants
President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration.
Universities grapple with the complicated politics of campus encampments
Montreal police are facing pressure to move in and dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University campus on Thursday, as a growing number of universities across this country grapple with the tough decision of how to handle the protests.