Man testifies he didn't mean to kill mom

Son faces second-degree murder charges after stabbing, decapitating mother in March 2022

- JACQUES GALLANT

When Dallas Ly had done poorly on a school test, he said his mother would strike him three to five times with a back scratcher that had a sharpened edge; if it was an end-of-year exam, it was more like 10 strikes.

She would also hit him with a broom and a shoehorn. She would throw dishes at him while he was doing chores, and once repeatedly slammed his face against a window when he was nine. She told him he would amount to nothing, that his father was dead when he wasn’t, that he’d end up homeless, and that she wouldn’t cry if he died.

Ly recounted all of this while testifying this week in his own defence at his second-degree murder trial. He admits to fatally stabbing and decapitating his mother, Tien Ly, in their Toronto apartment in March 2022, but is adamant that he never meant to kill her.

At trial, the Crown has charged that Ly’s story of his mother’s killing keeps changing, each time making her sound more aggressive in her final moments.