Crown concedes stabbing accused ‘in psychosis’
Prosecutors, defence agree she should be found not criminally responsible in PATH slaying
Crown and defence lawyers agree that the woman who fatally stabbed a complete stranger in Toronto’s underground PATH network meets the test to be found not criminally responsible for first-degree murder.
Prosecutors on Friday conceded Rohi- nie Bisesar, 43, was highly likely in a severe state of psychosis, in which she was subject to hallucinations and delusions when she stabbed Rosemarie Junor, 28, in the heart in a Shoppers Drug Mart on Dec. 11, 2015.
Dr. Ian Swayze, a forensic psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health who has been involved in treat- ing and assessing Bisesar since the fall of 2017, testified Bisesar has severe schizophrenia.
The killing would not have occurred if Bisesar received treatment, he said.
“She resisted because she was in psychosis,” Swayze said.
“This is a terrible tragedy, a terrible tragedy,” Swayze said. “Miss Bisesar is a victim of her illness and we have someone deceased because of it.”
Bisesar believed her actions and movements were being controlled by external forces through nanotechnology — possibly in the form of a computer chip or device — implanted in her body somehow, he said. She also heard voices commanding her to do things.
According to Swayze’s report, which was made a court exhibit Friday, Bisesar told him that, on the day of the stabbing, a voice in her head asked “what is the worst thing you can do?”
Swayze testified Bisesar was unable to think rationally and recognize her actions as legally or morally wrong — part of the test for determining if a person is criminally responsible. Swayze testified he does not believe she is faking her symptoms, in part, because she fought treatment “tooth and nail.”
Junor, 28, was on an afternoon break from her job as an ultrasound technician when she popped into the Shoppers Drug Mart beneath Toronto’s financial district while on the phone with a friend, according to an agreed statement of facts based on witness statements and surveillance video.
Junor was almost finished shopping — she just needed lotion for her husband Lenny — when Bisesar stabbed her once, “directly in the heart,” with a knife.
Junor’s friend heard screaming on the phone.
Surveillance video shows Bisesar left the bloody knife on a cosmetics display.
Bisesar stabbed Junor 24 seconds after walking into the Shopper’s Drug Mart and left immediately afterwards.
Junor died in hospital four days later, on Dec.15, when she was declared braindead and removed from a ventilator.
The women were complete strangers, court heard.
According to Bisesar’s account of the day told to Swayze and documented in his report, the day started as usual.
She showered, dressed and read the business section of the papers to “keep up my knowledge.” She ended up downtown — possibly at the Starbucks near Adelaide and Yonge where she often sat — and heard the voice in her head say: “what is the worst thing you can do?”
She said the voice told her to get a knife. She went all the way to a familiar Dollar Store, near Sheppard subway station, to buy the knife — a decision that Swayze said indicated how irrational her thinking was — then came back downtown on the subway. She said she went to the bathroom in First Canadian Place. She “didn’t want to hurt someone,” she said.
“Then the voices, communication and movements made me sit up, turn, walk straight into the Shopper’s fast … I was not an agreeable participant.” She said she went up to Junor with no hesitation, the knife barely out of the bag.
“The voice said, if you mean to do it, do it,” she told Swayze. “The voice and movements raised my hand, pushed forward … it was like the knife was sticking to my hand and couldn’t be dropped.”
She said she thought it was just “an activity” and she “didn’t think it was legal or otherwise, because I was spending all my energy fighting the voices.” She immediately left and went home. “The voice said I should have kept the knife,” she said.
After court ended, Junor’s mother Rosalind Junor, who turned 70 on Friday, sounded extremely emotional.
“We were a very happy family,” she said. “May I remind you all that when you leave the house in the morning, just tell (your family) that you love them.”
She said she had been willing to forgive Bisesar if she took responsibility for killing her daughter. “I was going to go down on my knees and say I forgive you, along with my children and God.”
Rosalind Junor said she still believes Bisesar knew what she did. “She is mentally ill, right, but she is responsible.”
“She use her hand with that weapon and stabbed my baby in her heart.”
Bisesar did not initially show remorse for killing Junor because she did not believe Junor had died, but was, rather, hiding, Swayze testified. Once she started treatment she began to understand what she had done, he said. She told him Junor “was a victim of my illness.”
Swayze testified it appears Bisesar started showing minor symptoms of schizophrenia as early as 2007 and they may have worsened after 2012.
On March 7, 2014, Bisesar’s mother called 911 after Bisesar threatened to burn the family home down, according to Swayze’s report. Bisesar claimed at the time she was hearing voices telling her to harm somebody and threatening her family. She said there was something inside her — nanotechnology — controlling her.
Bisesar was admitted to Toronto East General Hospital but denied she was ill and refused medication. She was found to lack capacity to consent to treatment and was forced to take medication. It was suggested she had schizophrenia. When she became a voluntary patient she signed herself out “against medical advice,” according to the discharge notes of Dr. Peter Nynkowski. She did not show signs of homicidal or suicidal ideation, according to the notes. There was “no formal followup organized. There is no other arrangement for this patient.”
Should Bisesar be found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder, she would be sent to a psychiatric hospital where her release would be governed by the Ontario Review Board. A decision is expected Tuesday.