Signs Toronto shooting planned
Ammo, weapons in apartment, documents say
It is not so common that in the reading of what are called ITOs — the “information to Obtain” documents police swear out to convince judges and justices of the peace to give them search warrants — there are wrenching glimpses of the lonely modern world.
Yet there they are, in three Toronto Police ITOs that were finally unsealed Thursday, the end of a protracted exercise which saw media organizations including the National Post send a lawyer to court, by Ontario Superior Court Judge David Corbett.
The documents relate to the notorious Danforth shooting on July 22 in the central-east part of Toronto, where a little girl named Julianna Kozis and a young woman named Reese Fallon were murdered, and 13 other people wounded, some grievously, when a man with a gun prowled the busy café-lined street filled with people out on a summer’s night.
Faisal Hussain was that gunman.
He died at the scene of what police have said was a self-inflicted gunshot, though his death continues to be investigated by the slow-moving Special Investigations Unit, the provincial agency that probes all police-inflicted deaths or serious injuries.
The time the SIU is taking — eight weeks later, the unit has still not identified a so-called “subject officer,” meaning any officer who fired at and hit Hussain — you would imagine the scene was as confounding as the murder that so captivated the great fictional detective Hercule Poirot on the Orient Express.
The SIU slow march notwithstanding, the death of the 29-year-old Hussain is no mystery.
But what took him to the point where he left the Thorncliffe Park apartment where he lived with his parents that warm night and headed out to slaughter people remains firmly in the grey shades of a culture that loves only the black and white.
Among the poignant revelations in the ITOs:
❚ When Hussain died, his cellphone was ringing, the name “Home” flashing on the screen. Officers on the scene answered it, and spoke to his parents, arranging for an interview that night. The Post’s Jake Edmiston reported a few days after the shooting that the cell of one of Hussain’s victims, 18-year-old Fallon, was also ringing non-stop as firefighters tried to save her.
❚ The force’s ETF squad, with an explosives dog, entered the family apartment that night, under socalled “exigent” or emergency circumstances, which don’t require a warrant. The dog hit on a sleigh bed, and in one of the drawers under it, the dog “indicated.” Police found a cache of ammunition and some weapons, white powder they believed was cocaine, and an Islamic headdress. The details about the weapons are blacked out by the judge, but a later reference in the document says that “Given the amount of ammunition on hand,” police believed “this occurrence was planned.”
❚ Two days before the shooting, police arrested Hussain for shoplifting; he was released unconditionally. It is one of just two interactions with Toronto officers he had before the shooting, though he had also been stopped by the Ontario Provincial Police for driving with a suspended licence in 2014, and was also an OPP suspect for marijuana trafficking in 2010.
❚ But Hussain did have three earlier encounters with Toronto police, all in May and June of 2010. These were calls for an “emotionally disturbed person” and though there are few details of the circumstances, the ITO affiant, the officer who swore the information, wrote, “Based on reports dating back to 2010, when Faisal Hussain was apprehended because of his level of depression and fascination with death, violence and explosions” to explain why police wanted access to his computer and cellphones.
❚ Several years ago, Hussain’s father confirmed, he had taken Hussain to Pakistan for a family visit. He liked it there, the father said, “because people left him alone here.” By the time of the final ITO, dated just two days after the shooting, or July 24, the affiant, Det.-Const. Bobbi-Jo McKillop, knew quite a lot about Hussain.
By then, police had interviewed his parents, his twin brother (who in earlier media reports was always referred to as his older brother), and various witnesses, including one who appears to be one of the two men who followed Hussain as he entered a dead-end alley behind Bowden Street and appeared to be reloading in a practised manner, and another who saw Hussain stand over Fallon and shoot her multiple times.
The day of the shooting, the twin brother was visiting his parents, and was there when Hussain returned from work.
At his mother’s request, the ITO says, “he spoke to Faisal about getting his life together, getting married and getting direction.”
“In the past, Faisal has listened to him, but this time he called himself ‘mentally retarded’ numerous times and went to the balcony for a cigarette.” The brother said Hussain had “no real friends,” and while he went to mosque with their dad, he wasn’t devout.
The parents believed he didn’t use drugs, never spoke about guns and certainly had none, had never had a girlfriend and had no mental health issues.
McKillop noted, without comment, that the family had later released a statement citing Hussain’s “severe mental health challenges” and saying he had struggled with psychosis and depression his whole life.
His parents acknowledged he spent most of his time alone in his room, and though his father believed he was playing video games, police found none — only a series of smart phones, iPads and laptops.
“Faisal Hussain’s only companions appear to be his parents and they do not even know him that well and what he has been up to. The only way of understanding the true extent of what occurred or was planned is to go to the only place Hussain spent time, which is on these devices.”
HUSSAIN DID HAVE THREE EARLIER ENCOUNTERS WITH TORONTO POLICE, IN MAY AND JUNE OF 2010. THESE WERE CALLS FOR AN ‘EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED PERSON.’