A 22-year-old man accused of murdering a New Westminster woman whose body was found burning in a Burnaby park is scheduled to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter next week.
Carlo Castillo Tobias and a 15-year-old youth who cannot be named were charged last March with first degree murder and indignity to human remains after the body of 49-year-old Ma Cecilia Loreto was found ablaze in Greentree Village Park in the early morning hours of March 18, 2021.
Investigators at the time believed Loreto had been killed at her New Westminster home the day before and then dumped in the park, according to an Integrated Homicide Investigation Team news release.
Tobias was also later charged with sexual interference, defined as sexually touching a person under the age of 16.
He made his first appearance in New Westminster provincial court on March 24, 2021 and has remained in custody since his arrest, according to the New Westminster court registry.
On Monday, a new information or charge document was filed in the case, listing not murder and indignity to human remains as the charges but manslaughter and acting as an accessory after the fact to murder.
Tobias is now scheduled to plead guilty to those charges next Tuesday (March 22), according to the registry.
The charges against the youth of first degree murder and indignity to human remains have not changed, according to the registry.
The next court date on that file is set for March 30.
Loreto, also known as Maricel or Mycel to friends and family, was a recent immigrant from the Philippines and a mother with a “loving family” who worked in a grocery store in the Vancouver area, according to IHIT.
When charges in the case were announced last year, IHIT spokesperson Sgt. Frank Jang said Loreto and the two people charged in her death knew each other and neither had been previously known to police or involved in crime.
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