Man testifies he didn’t mean to kill mom

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

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.

The abuse Dallas Ly says he suffered at the hands of his mother is a central element of the case, one of his lawyers, Marco Sciarra, told the jury in a rare defence opening address last week. A photo of Ly’s back was entered as an exhibit, showing multiple red bumps and scarring that Ly said was caused by his mother scraping the back-scratcher across his body.

“What this case is really about are things that happen behind closed doors,” Sciarra told the jury.

“Mr. Ly admits that he caused his own mother’s death. This is a trial about whether what happened is murder.”

The dismembered body of Tien Ly, a 46-year-old nail salon owner, was found in a garbage bag near Eastern and Berkshire avenues. Dallas Ly, 21 at the time, testified that the killing happened after his mother became upset when he told her he was moving out to live with his aunt.

“I thought she would be happy about me moving, not having to worry about me anymore,” he said under questioning by his other lawyer, Jessyca Greenwood.

Ly testified in a soft-spoken voice, except when asked to repeat what his mother said; he would suddenly bellow in Vietnamese into the court microphone, before immediately switching back to a low voice to translate into English.

“I hope I see you on Yonge Street hungry and homeless and when you die, I’m not going to come to your grave and cry,” Ly said his mother told him, among other things.

He testified he retrieved a hunting knife from his bedroom, to show his mother that he was “serious” about leaving. But she wasn’t scared, and instead started punching him and threatening to kill him. He slipped and fell to the ground, and then “I just started seeing red and before I knew it, I lost it; I started swinging at her,” Ly testified.

He said the knife landed in her neck. He retreated to his bedroom, testifying that he “didn’t feel like anything was real at that point.” Still believing that his mother was alive, he said he called her phone several times, wondering why she hadn’t come home yet from the nail salon.

Eventually, he was hit with the realization of what he had done, and he started to panic. He told the jury he thought it was best “to hack her into small pieces” and that her head had already been mostly severed. But, he said, he couldn’t go through with dismembering her further, and placed her body in a grocery buggy, eventually disposing of the body on the street.

Crown attorney Jay Spare pointed out in cross-examination that Tien Ly’s body had far more stab wounds than suggested by her son’s testimony, and that there were other options available to him rather than confronting her with a knife. He could have easily pushed her away, or called 911 to report her threatening behaviour, Spare said.

After dumping his mother’s body, Ly returned home and quickly packed up his things. He went to the airport, but was denied boarding to the U.S. because he only had a one-way ticket. He took an Uber to Niagara Falls, but wasn’t permitted to cross the land border because he had already been denied at the airport. He made his way to Hamilton where he posed as a Chinese refugee before eventually returning to Toronto, where he was arrested.

The trial continues Monday.