A 16-year-old boy was arrested at his summer job and charged with the second-degree murder of a stranger he allegedly mouthed off to.

The teen, who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is accused of insulting Dwayne Bride before stabbing him to death with a knife he was carrying, according to Det. Sgt. Dave Oleniuk of the homicide unit.

"There was some taunting back and forth," says Oleniuk. "Insults started flying. It's one of those late-night things where people should just walk away."

Instead, the east-Hamilton boy was arrested at 4 p.m. Thursday and will make his first appearance in court Friday morning.

Bride, 42, was on his way home from a bar in the early hours of June 3 when his path allegedly crossed that of the accused and his friend near Hess Street South and Bold Street. Neither boy knew Bride. Both boys were on bicycles.

During the exchange of words, someone on a balcony of a nearby apartment building threw eggs on the trio. Another passerby tried to defuse the situation. Another group of pedestrians walked by the argument while it moved into the middle of the street. By the end of it all, Bride lay bleeding on the sidewalk.

Oleniuk says the second boy took part in insulting Bride, but did not physically harm him and will not be charged.

Bride had been at a bar at Wentworth Avenue South and Main Street East earlier in the night and was simply trying to get home.

This is the fifth teen to be arrested for murder in Hamilton in recent memory.

Last month, three 17-year-old female sex workers were arrested for the second-degree murder of a 33-year-old Mississauga man who stumbled soaked in blood into a Stoney Creek gas station.

One of those girls is from Hamilton; the others are from the Toronto area. They are accused of stabbing Hayder Quasim-Rushdi in the neck with a knife.

In 2015, a 15-year-old Hamilton boy was charged with first-degree murder —and other serious charges — in connection to the killing of Nathan Miller, 20, who was fatally shot at a home on Madison Avenue.

The youth eventually pleaded to a lesser charge.

"This was a chance encounter," Oleniuk says of Bride's run-in with the boys.

Police also said that media coverage of Bride's murder led to key witnesses coming forward with information.

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