SASKATOON — A judge has sentenced a teen girl to three years for setting a fellow student on fire in the hallway of a Saskatoon high school.
The 16-year-old must serve two years in intensive rehabilitative custody followed by one year in the community with supervision.
“The toll of these offences is immense. The ripples are wide and still widening,” Court of King’s Bench Justice Krista Zerr said Monday.
Three years is the maximum sentence for attempted murder under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
The sentence was jointly recommended by both Crown and defence lawyers, after the girl pleaded guilty to the charge last year.
She also pleaded guilty to unlawfully causing bodily harm, as a teacher who came to the victim’s aid was also burned.
The victim was 15 when she was targeted in the lunchtime attack at Evan Hardy Collegiate in September 2024.
Court heard the friendship between the two girls spiralled into obsession and threats, before the offender doused the victim with lighter fluid and set her ablaze.
The victim was severely burned on her arms and face and required multiple surgeries.
Neither the victim nor the attacker can be identified under the youth justice act.
Defence lawyer Fola Adelugba told court her client, who was 14 at the time of the attack, had faced hardships at home, including sexual abuse.
Adelugba said the girl has various psychological conditions, including early-onset schizophrenia, autism and pyromania.
She also apologized.
“I know sorry is not enough, but it is how I truly feel. I am aware that everyone, or most of everyone, will not forgive me,” she told the sentencing hearing on Feb. 26.
Court also heard that day from the victim. She wrote in a victim impact statement that she had to learn how to sit up and walk again. Her voice also changed and she became left-handed.
“I’m more afraid of large crowds. I used to enjoy going to the (exhibition) and going on rides, but now I don’t want to be around people, especially strangers,” she wrote in a victim impact statement read by her mother.
The mother told the hearing that the burns caused 40 per cent of her daughter’s skin to peel off, requiring skin grafts. The girl received six surgeries in the first six weeks and scars developed on her vocal cords.
“All she could do was whisper,” said the mother. “We are still haunted by her screams as her dressings were being changed, the fear in her eyes as she saw her skin for the first time, and then to see her face for the first time.”
Court heard the fire left the girl’s hair “crispy” and that teachers used scissors to cut her melted backpack from her clothes.
The victim’s older brother, who also attended the school, said in his victim impact statement that he remembers seeing an orange glow in the hallway.
“Finding out that it was coming from my sister was horrific,” he wrote.
Court heard that educational assistants were with the attacker before she barged by them and set the victim on fire. One worker told court she wished she could have done more to help.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2026.
Jeremy Simes, The Canadian Press
