Victim’s mother angered over teen girl’s sentence in mall parking lot killing​on April 4, 2025 at 9:00 am

Nearly a year after 16-year-old Ahmad Al Marrach was killed in Halifax, the first of four youths charged in connection with his death has been sentenced.

The girl, who was 14 at the time of the crime, pled guilty to manslaughter in October 2024.

On Thursday, a judge handed her a sentence of three more months in custody followed by two years of community reintegration.

For Al Marrach’s family, the sentence feels too lenient.

“This is not a fair sentencing. This individual should be in custody forever, herself and the other people involved,” said Basima Al Jaji, Al Marrach’s mother, through an Arabic interpreter.

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She says she hasn’t been able to sleep thinking about what happened to her son.

“I still cannot accept what happened to Ahmad, everything that went on with Ahmad, everything that he went through nobody can endure,” she said.

Al Marrach was a Grade 10 student who arrived in Canada with his family in 2016 after escaping the war in Syria. Police found him badly injured in a parking garage next to the Halifax Shopping Centre on April 22, 2024 and he died later in hospital.

While delivering his decision, Judge Mark Heerema told the courtroom what he witnessed in the mall surveillance footage was a “cruel, callous and cowardly attack.”

Although he said this decision may be seen as “too lenient,” it promises greater prospects of rehabilitation.

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