A Brockville teenager, who pushed Damian Sobieraj into the St. Lawrence River where he drowned, was found guilty of manslaughter and three related charges on Wednesday.

In a judgment that took her three hours to read, Justice Kimberly Moore found the girl, now 16 but 14 at the time, guilty on all counts: Manslaughter, uttering threats, criminal negligence causing death and obstruction of police.

Moore, of the Ontario Court of Justice, said the girl was acting in “anger and frustration” when she “body-slammed” the 33-year-old Sobieraj into the river on Sept. 13, 2018.

In her decision, Moore rejected defence arguments that the teen was acting in lawful defence of her friends when she went to their aid in Hardy Park that evening.

Sobieraj was grappling with two boys who had been destroying trees in the park in an attempt to hold them for police. But when the girl came barrelling out of the dark to confront Sobieraj, he no longer had a hold of the youths, Moore found.

Instead of speaking to Sobieraj or trying to assess what had happened, the girl went on the attack, the judge found. The slight, 156-pound, five-foot-nine-inch Sobieraj was outweighed by the larger teen, she said.

The criminal-negligence-causing-death verdict resulted from the fact the teen made no effort to save the drowning man, who couldn’t swim, despite his screams for help.

Although the girl had a cellphone, she made no calls to 911 or made any moves to save him, although a life-saving station was close by, Moore said.

Instead, the girl and her dozen friends in the park ran, resulting in the guilty verdict on the obstructing police count.

As the girl and a group of her friends fled the park after Sobieraj went into the water, they were stopped by a Brockville Police officer who was responding to the 911 calls that Sobieraj had made earlier.

When directly asked whether anybody had gone into the water, the girl and her friends lied, saying they knew nothing.

Moore noted that Sobieraj would have been in the river for more than five minutes and it might have been too late to save him. But the kids’ lies meant it was much later before police began looking in the river.

The uttering-threats verdict stemmed from an incident earlier in the evening when the girl chased two youths out of the park, threatening to kill them.

The two lads ran into the girl and her friends at the Hardy Park gazebo at around 8 p.m. that evening. The youths were trash-talking the other kids over a brawl at Brockville Collegiate Institute a few days earlier. The youths traded insults with one of them calling the girl “a whale” and made fun of her weight. The girl erupted in anger and chased the youths out of the park, screaming threats as she ran.

The courtroom was packed as Moore read her meticulous judgment in which she careful recounted the evidence of all 21 witness at the trial and the relevant law. Most of the witnesses were aged 13-17 and were 14 months younger when the incidents happened. Moore said two of the witnesses lied outright while others were sometimes truthful, sometimes not.

The girl was subdued, neatly dressed and her hair done up during the judgment. As she has done throughout the trial, the teen doodled on a pad while Moore spoke. Her father, who has attended every day of the trial, along with her mother, family members and friends were there for support. They were glum-faced after the decision was read.

Sobieraj’s mother, Iwona, wept and hugged supporters after the verdict. She has attended every minute of the trial, enduring the sometimes disturbing evidence, including a video of the underwater recovery of her son’s body, a medical examiner’s description of his injuries and a recording of his final 911 calls to police.

In her judgment, Moore reconstructed the events of that warm September evening in Hardy Park, based on the testimony.

As they often did, a group of about a dozen teenagers, including the girl, drifted into the park in the early evening. They hung out around the gazebo, talking and playing on their phones. At one point, a girl showed up with a bag of booze, mainly coolers, which she passed around.

The only real excitement happened when the two youths got into a verbal altercation with the girl and her friends and she chased them from the park, shouting her threats.

Most of the kids went for pizza at around 9:30 p.m. When they got back to the park at about 10 p.m., two or three of the youths began striking trees with sticks and shouting obscenities loud enough to worry passersby in the park.

Sobieraj, who was walking his little pug Rosie and playing Pokemon Go, came upon the youths vandalizing the trees.

“In a period of approximately 10 minutes, the lives of all of these individuals were unimaginably altered,” Moore said.

Sobieraj confronted the youths, shouting at them to stop damaging the trees. The boys, aged around 13, refused, swore back at Sobieraj and continued whacking the trees.

The confrontation escalated when a large youth, 17, known for his violence, came out of the gazebo to face off against Sobieraj. He pushed the older man and perhaps punched him, the judge said. Sobieraj’s response was to whip out his phone and call 911, telling police he was under attack.

Many of the teens scattered, not wanting to face police. Sobieraj told the 911 dispatcher that he was going to grab the two offenders, and he chased the young tree-hitters down toward the waterfront.

There he struggled with the boys, trying to hold them for police. He managed to grab one, and then the other, but they squirmed loose. Evidence suggested that he was hit several times by the boys who held on to their sticks, the judge said.

Moore emphasized that up to this point the girl had not been involved in the altercations with Sobieraj at the tree area or at the waterfront. Accounts vary on where she was in the park at the time, but she was not with the others, the judge said.

With no warning, the girl rushed out of the dark and pushed Sobieraj into the river, said the judge, recounting the testimony of four witnesses.

It probably will take several months before the girl is sentenced. Moore requested a psychological assessment of the youth and asked for a progress report on the assessment on Mar. 27.

After that an all-day sentencing hearing would be held with victim-impact statements and sentencing arguments by the Crown and defence. Moore would make her sentencing decision after that.

In the meantime, the teen is free under the strict curfew provisions that she has been under for the past year.

wlowrie@postmedia.com