Barriers won’t solve the problem
These have been dreadful weeks, through May and June, of homicides piling up and other lives just as randomly spared: Two children, sisters, shot (they’re both recovering) in a Scarborough playground, by a gunman spraying bullets which missed the purported target; an officer struck in the chest during a shootout in the parking lot of a Warden Ave. bar, alive today because the bullet was blunted by his cellphone and his Kevlar vest.
Deadly violence, common in a pulsing metropolis, where many of the victims would seem to have been deliberately marked for murder — by firearms, by knives, by lethal fist blows. Unfathomable mass carnage in late April where the murder weapon was a vehicle jumping the sidewalk, the driver mowing down pedestrians. Or haphazard attacks with no rhyme or reason, an unfortunate individual in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I grow weary of reassuring that Toronto remains a remarkably safe city. Sometimes I don’t believe it myself. For many, Murder in the Six is another planet, rarely touching their communities, while other pockets of the city have been plagued by violent crime, by gangs, by drug trafficking, by guns. By the frenziedly deranged. Too much time has passed to blame the vagabond mentally ill who wander our streets on health care cuts by the Mike Harris government. There have been decades to right this wrong.
The 57-year-old man charged with first-degree murder in the subway incident made his first court appearance Monday morning at College Park.
Dressed in a hooded white jail boiler suit — his own clothes seized — John Reszetnik craned his neck, looking curiously around the small courtroom. The procedure lasted scarcely a minute before court constables walked him backwards out of the dock, the accused muttering unintelligible words. He will next appear before the court, via video, on July 17. His arrest had been rapid. North told reporters police had responded to a call for service around 10:15 a.m. Reszetnik was in custody within 20 minutes.
He’d left the station, walked some distance away, then returned. His description had been provided to police by emergency responders first on the scene.
“He did not surrender. There was a brief interaction with our officers at street level.”
Reszetnik was “known to police,” in the parlance.
There had been a “minor interaction,” said North, between the accused and cops in 2015.
Documents uncovered by the Star indicate that Reszetnik is the son of the late Sigmund Reszetnik, a highly regarded architect, and they co-owned a home on Martin Rd., at least as of 2007.
North said statements taken from witnesses and security video suggest the push came out of nowhere, totally unprovoked by any exchange between the victim and the accused.
The only “interaction” between the two men was the push.
“At this point in time, that’s what we’re working on,” said North. “Our allegations are the incident took place in a very quick fashion and ended very quickly. I don’t have any indication they were chatting before,” said North.
There were about 50 people in the station when the victim was shoved onto the track. Only a handful stuck around to be interviewed by police.
It is understandable when witnesses to crime fade into the background or hustle away, reluctant to become involved in an investigation where the suspects may be criminally connected, in a shooting or such, fearful of retribution or being called out as snitches. But that’s not the dynamic at play here.
“From the video you can see five or six people being very animated,” said Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux, also of the homicide squad. “They are reacting to what they saw, not something that’s been said to them.”
North suggested the witnesses may have needed some time to process what occurred.
“We are looking for seven or eight witnesses who we believe had some very close interaction with both our accused and our deceased. They would have seen what happened, based on some utterances and some witness statements that we have. We are appealing to those seven or eight witnesses to come forward. I understand it’s a very traumatic incident that they may have witnessed. We would like them to come forward so we can interview them and get a narrative of what actually transpired.”
Investigators will “delve more deeply” in the background of the accused to determine whether mental illness may be a factor. “We’re going to follow the evidence wherever it may lead and if that’s the case then that’s the road we’ll go down.
“I’m not going into his state of mind during the event.”
As could-have-been-me disturbing as the incident was, deepening the public’s sense of vulnerability, such occurrences — shoving by a stranger onto the subway tracks — are exceedingly rare. The last time a fatality resulted was in 1997, when 27-year-old Charlene Minkowski was deliberately knocked in front of a subway by a crack-addicted schizophrenic. Herbert Cheong was convicted of second-degree murder after court heard that he’d developed a plan to kill someone. A Crown attorney at the time called it “a form of urban terrorism … totally random.”
A teenager was pushed in front of a subway by a “smiling” assailant in 1978. In 2009, three boys were pushed into the path of a train at Dufferin Station. One kept his balance but two toppled over the edge. They both survived. The man who shoved them was found not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.
Brad Ross, spokesperson for the TTC, told the Star there have been 18 suicide attempts on the subway this year to date, six of them immediately fatal. In the other 12, “once they leave the station, we don’t know if they succumbed to their injuries.”
Last year was a high-water mark for subway suicide in Toronto — 45 attempts, 19 fatalities.
Just two days ago, a woman fell in front of a subway at the Pape Station, at first wrongly described by police as an accident. Corrected later as a suicide. Police are still trying to identify her.
But only one previous homicide, more than two decades ago, and one murder-suicide — a woman who jumped with her infant child. “Nor do we want the TTC to become a suicide hot spot,” Ross added.
Although that quickly became the bigger issue Tuesday — the incident morphing from homicide to suicide prevention.
Is it reasonable to put up barriers co-ordinated with train doors at all stations, including costly retrofit for old stations, at a cost of some $1.5 billion? A study is already underway but it won’t be completed until 2020.
Keep in mind that the “Luminous Veil” on the Bloor Street Viaduct, constructed in 2003, has not lessened suicide rates in Toronto. Those intent on killing themselves by jumping have simply moved to other locations. If not a bridge then a tall building or a bluff … or a drug overdose … or a selfinflicted gun shot … or a slashed wrist.
Barriers aren’t the answer. And certainly won’t prevent murder by a maddened stranger.
Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno