Trial postponed again for murder of 13-year-old girl found dead in B.C. park

The trial of the man accused of the murder of a 13-year-old girl in Burnaby, B.C., more than five years ago will not start until 2023.

Marissa Shen was last seen alive on July 18, 2017, at a Tim Hortons in the Metro Vancouver city. Five hours later, her body was found in Burnaby's Central Park.

Ibrahim Ali was arrested more than a year later and charged with first-degree murder. A trial date had been set for September.

Ali's trial is now scheduled to begin on Jan. 16 of next year, the B.C. Prosecution Service confirmed Monday.

"Adjournments of the trial have been necessary to accommodate various pre-trial applications which cannot be reported upon due to publication bans," spokesperson Dan McLaughlin wrote in an email.

"Although the trial is currently expected to run for three to four months the length of the trial will be impacted by the results of the pre-trial applications."

B.C.'s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has described the case as the biggest it has worked on in its history.

The RCMP initially had 2,000 persons of interest but said 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. He has been in custody since his 2018 arrest.