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A memorial for an elderly woman killed in a stabbing attack is seen in Pickering, Ont., on May 30, 2025. The sentence for the boy, who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, includes six years in custody and four years of conditional supervision, which was agreed upon by the Crown and defence.Sharif Hassan/The Canadian Press
A 15-year-old boy who killed an elderly woman in an unprovoked attack outside her Pickering, Ont., home last year was handed the maximum youth sentence of 10 years for first-degree murder on Wednesday.
The decision came after the boy apologized in court Tuesday for repeatedly stabbing Eleanor Doney, an 83-year-old grandmother and retired kindergarten teacher, as she was cleaning up her yard in May 2025.
The sentence for the boy, who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, includes six years in custody and four years of conditional supervision, which was agreed upon by the Crown and defence. He will receive a year of credit for the time he has spent in pre-sentencing custody.
The killing shook the quiet suburb east of Toronto and devastated Doney’s husband of 63 years, forcing him to move out of their home and into an assisted-living facility, the judge said.
Boy who killed elderly woman in Pickering apologizes during sentencing hearing
“There is no dispute that this was a horrific crime that forever changed the lives of many people,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Lisa Wannamaker told the Oshawa, Ont., courtroom on Wednesday.
Court heard that the day before the killing, the boy had been suspended for bringing a knife to school, was increasingly absent from class and facing expulsion as he fantasized about murder. Investigators found photos the boy had taken of the intersection near Doney’s house dating back nearly two weeks before the fatal attack, court heard.
Carrying a briefcase and wearing a black trench coat, the boy struck up a brief conversation with Doney before stabbing her eight times, the judge said. Surveillance footage captured the boy fleeing the scene and leaving the knife in a wooded area, where it was later found by police.
Police arrested the boy, who was 14 at the time, at his family home that evening and seized a knife set with his fingerprints on it and one knife missing, court heard.
Leading up to the murder, the boy had searched online for serial killers, stabbings and evading police detection, and in online conversations with other students at his elementary school he contemplated killing his grandmother and hurting animals, court heard.
The Crown had argued against giving the boy credit for time served, but the judge sided with the boy’s lawyer, who argued it would help his rehabilitation.
That recommendation is not an attempt to take away from the seriousness of the crime, defence lawyer Erin Dann said Tuesday, acknowledging that her client “brutally killed an elderly woman for no reason whatsoever.”
Wannamaker said she considered the boy’s young age and the fact he pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, sparing Doney’s loved ones from a trial. She also noted that the boy will never set foot in a high school, and “young people experience time differently than adults” because they’re still cognitively developing.
However, the judge said the boy is still preoccupied with violence, inconsistent in his explanations for the murder and unwilling to accept full blame for the crime.
Boy charged with first-degree murder in attack on elderly woman in Pickering, police say
When the boy was offered a chance to speak in court on Tuesday, he apologized for the harm he caused to Doney’s family and the Pickering community and said he wanted to learn from his actions.
Addressing the boy directly at Wednesday’s hearing, the judge said she hopes that his apology was sincere – and that seeing the courtroom filled with Doney’s loved ones shows him the grief he has caused.
“I hope you remain committed to therapy and to your plan because it can lead to you becoming a positive member of society,” the judge said.
“Perhaps something good can in fact come of this horrible tragedy.”
Wannamaker said no sentence could possibly erase the suffering of Doney’s family, who “never wanted to say goodbye” to the grandmother and found the process of giving victim impact statements in court traumatic.
Doney is remembered as someone who brought stability and hope to the stresses of daily life, her family said in a victim impact statement read by the judge, adding she would have chosen to love those who hurt her.
Wannamaker said Doney will be remembered not for her death but for “the beautiful person she was” throughout her life.
“It would seem that anyone would be lucky to have an Eleanor Doney in their life,” the judge said.