‘He was afraid he was going to hurt people’
Killer ‘obsessed with guns,’ says former high school educator
As a student at Victoria Park Collegiate Institute, Faisal Hussain was a “very disturbed” young man who spoke “a lot about the pain he was in and the voices that he heard,” says the former head of special education at the high school.
Enrolled in Focus on Success, a sep- arate program for at-risk students, the skinny teen frequently voiced a fear he might hurt someone, and once repeatedly cut into his face with a pencil sharpener blade, prompting a call to police, says educator Jenessa Dworet.
“He was really scared of himself,” said Dworet. “He was afraid he was going to hurt people. He was very obsessed with guns.”
Hussain, 29, walked down a stretch of Danforth Ave. just after 10 p.m. Sunday night and opened fire, killing 10-year- old Julianna Kozis, 18-year-old Reese Fallon and injuring more than a dozen others. He died of a gunshot wound after exchanging gunfire with two officers; authorities have not revealed the circumstances of his death, but police sources have said he shot himself.
Dworet, who lives off the Danforth, heard the killer’s name but didn’t realize it was her former student until she saw his photo.
She recognized the face of a young man who, nearly a decade ago, she would take on walks around the school neighbourhood in an effort to calm him down.
“It was chilling, because part of me was thinking: ‘What if he had done something like this while I worked with him?’ And part of me was thinking: ‘How could he have gone nine years without getting more support?’
“And that just breaks my heart, because I know he could have been a better person if he had had more support, or he at least could have been less of a threat to society,” she said.
Toronto police continue to investigate the shooting, while the province’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, probes Hussain’s death. Investigators are working to determine why — and how — Hussain obtained a gun and opened fire, including reviewing his online activity and his mental health history. Responding to claims by Daesh Wednesday that Hussain’s actions were a terrorist attack in its name, Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders issued a statement saying that “at this stage, we have no evidence to support these claims.”
Hussain’s family issued a statement Monday evening saying Hussain, one of four children, suffered from “severe mental health challenges,” and struggled with psychosis and depression. His parents had sought help for him but said the interventions of professionals were unsuccessful, and medications and therapy were “unable to treat him.”
Though Hussain himself had no criminal court files associated with his name, his older brother, Fahad Hussain, was last year charged with possessing ammunition, a charge stayed after the elder brother went into a coma from a drug overdose. CBC reported Wednesday that the gun used in the attack has been traced to the U.S. and Hussain may have obtained it from his brother.
Dworet says she met Hussain after he transferred to the Victoria Park school from Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute. Though she doesn’t know the specific circumstances, Dworet said she was told Hussain was determined to have posed a safety risk at Marc Garneau, possibly after bringing a weapon to school.
Ryan Bird, a spokesperson for the Toronto District School Board, said in an email that he could not release any information about current or former students due to privacy reasons and the ongoing police investigation.
“In general, when serious safety concerns are raised about a student, a threat assessment may be conducted by trained board staff to ensure the safety of school communities. This threat assessment can also include external agencies such as Toronto police,” Bird said.
Hussain’s family did not respond to requests for comment about their son’s behaviour in school. Dworet recalls that police were summoned to school after an incident where Hussain deliberately began to “carve up his own face” with the blade from a pencil sharpener. She believes Hussain was cutting himself as a form of pain relief.
“We called the police, the head of the guidance department went with him to a (psychiatric facility), he waited for hours and hours, and he was finally admitted, then he was released the next day,” Dworet said.
The incident is illustrative, she said, of how Hussain doesn’t seem to have gotten the help he so clearly needed. To her and others, it was evident he was suffering and a threat to himself and others.
“He was calling for help, he knew that he was not a safe person, and yet there was nothing that anybody could do, other than bring him back to the psych ward periodically, I guess,” she said. Hussain had also been mourning the loss of his 17-year-old sister, Faiza, who was killed in a car accident. Family friend Aamir Sukhera said that’s when Hussain’s mother asked him to “look after this one,” referring to Faisal.
After the accident, Sukhera said he went to the Hussain home and told the grieving three brothers that he would always be there for them and “I wanted to stay true to that.” Sukhera attempted to reach out to Hussain periodically, knowing his mental health challenges, and Hussain told him he was on medication.
When he ran into Hussain recently, Sukhera thought he was doing well. “There was nothing to indicate that he was troubled,” he said. “What he did, it just doesn’t make sense.”
Dworet said that during their periodic walks around the school neighbourhood, she got glimpses of a young man who “wanted to do something different with his life (but) didn’t know how to get there.”