Violent offender lashes out again

Group home victim hacked with sword after owner not told new resident may be threat

Nobody told her the man she was taking into her residential home was violent.

She learned it too late. By the time someone quietly shared that critical information with her, Syna Lorn had filled out his paperwork and moved into Victoria Manor.

He would be there just 48 hours before slashing his roommate with a sword in an unprovoked middle-of-the-night attack.

Had Angela Vourkoutiotis, operator of the home for persons with mental health issues, known Lorn had once stabbed a cab driver to within an inch of his life and had to be shot by police, she never would have put her other residents at risk by accepting him into her facility.

“I need people to be honest,” Vourkoutiotis says angrily. “I took a guy on good faith.”

An agency (which Vourkoutiotis declined to identify) phoned Victoria Manor looking for a bed for Lorn. Although the agency knew of his violent background, it did not disclose it to her. All she was told was he had recently been in hospital. This protection of

a client’s right to privacy — even when the safety of others could be affected — is a constant issue she faces overseeing 54 beds at two sideby-side group homes on Victoria Avenue South.

(Victoria Manor has a colourful history. It was once owned by brothers John and Aldo Martino, before they went bankrupt. Vourkoutiotis is John’s sister-in-law. The Martinos sold the manor to Joe Melo, whose murder in 2010 remains unsolved.)

Vourkoutiotis routinely accepts residents from hospitals, agencies, the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre and families. Many times she is not given a full history.

“People need to be up front with the information,” she says. “Especially when there’s violence involved. If someone had told me, Day 1, what had happened (earlier in Lorn’s life), I would never have let him in.”

A client’s confidentiality should never trump the safety of others, Vourkoutiotis argues.

It wasn’t until someone from the agency tipped her off to Lorn’s background that she became aware of his volatility. But by then he was living in Victoria Manor and she didn’t want to kick him out.

On Feb. 27, at about 3 a.m., Lorn got his hands on a sword and attacked the man he bunked with, sending him to hospital for stitches to his head. The man has since returned to Victoria Manor, where he has lived for 25 years.

Lorn, 31, is charged with assault, as well as two counts of breach of probation for being in possession of a weapon and for failing to keep the peace and be of good behaviour.

He appeared in court briefly Thursday by video. He could be seen standing inside a detention centre, wearing an orange jumpsuit and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

He said nothing apart from stating his name.

His lawyer has requested he be assessed by a forensic psychiatric team. In the past, court has heard Lorn may have schizophrenia.

In 2006 when Lorn was 21, he called a cab to an address at Tindale Court at 3:30 a.m., got in and then attacked the driver with a machete.

Rogers Musgrave, 63 then, escaped from his taxi before collapsing in a pool of blood. His face was sliced open as he was repeatedly hacked at. Doctors had to sew part of his ear back on. His forearm was cut to the bone. He had a fractured skull, brain injury and permanent nerve damage in his arm.

(In 2010, Musgrave suffered another tragedy when his son Brandon was murdered at a Hamilton house party.)

Court would eventually hear Lorn took off in the cab and was found by police two hours later, kneeling on the ground at Hixon Road. A constable repeatedly ordered him to drop the machete he held. Lorn smiled, raised the machete above his head and said: “I will kill you for your blood.” Then he screamed and rushed the officer, who fired seven shots. One hit Lorn in the leg. The province’s Special Investigations Unit cleared the officer of any wrongdoing.

Court heard that in 2006 Lorn was abusing ketamine, often referred to as a date rape drug, possibly to self-medicate schizophrenia.

Lorn pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and threatening death. He was sentenced to six years in prison, but was given double credit for time served, so he had three years to serve.

Lorn’s parents fled Cambodia for Thailand in 1979 as the Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million people. Lorn was born in Thailand and was two when his family came to Canada.

Vourkoutiotis knows the importance of lodging for her clients with mental health issues.

“I’m here to help people,” she says. “To get clients to a position in their life where they feel comfortable and the community feels comfortable.”

She also knows homes like Victoria Manor cannot deal with someone who is violent.

So what do you do with Lorn? Should he be in a hospital? In jail?

“The million dollar question,” says Vourkoutiotis, “is where does an individual like this go?”