Cops On Random Stabbing Suspect: ‘This Will Continue Until He Kills Somebody’
Posted May 21, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
By now you’ve heard the story about the 26-year-old college student who had just left a gym and was waiting for a streetcar at Broadview and Danforth around 8:30pm Tuesday night. From out of nowhere, a man appeared, pulled out a knife and began stabbing her, hitting her twice in the stomach and once in the arm.
She suffered serious wounds and her screams scared him off. A Good Samaritan arrived to help save her life while others followed the man and pointed him out to police.
Cops arrested 47-year-old Samad Dabiri not far from the scene. He’s a man they’ve become all too familiar with because he’s been accused of committing the same kind of crime not once but twice before in the past. And every time he’s been let back out after facing charges.
The suspect in this case has severe mental problems and was charged in a similar attack back in 2003, when an elderly man suffered knife wounds to the stomach at the Dufferin Mall. Another incident traces back to 1999, when Dabiri was collared for threatening and a weapons charge.
Why was he back out in public? A frustrated Det. Darren Laing claims the man’s mental state has kept him out of jail several times. “That charge in 2003, he was found guilty of committing the act,” he reveals. “However, he was found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder.”
Dabiri was sent to a hospital and came under control of an Ontario health panel, which eventually judged him well enough to be released back onto the streets. It was on those same streets that he’s accused of committing the random act Tuesday night. There’s still no known motive.
“It’s very frustrating for me,” an exasperated Laing agrees. “It should be frustrating for everyone. He was remanded into a psychiatric facility the summer of 2003. Best of my information, by the late summer of 2004, he’s already back in the community on some level. He received a conditional discharge from the Ontario Review Board in the fall of 2006 and then an absolute discharge from them in 2007.”
Laing says the suspect is a landed immigrant and that he’s already spoken to federal officials about his future status in this country.
The suspect made his first appearance at College Park Courts in the morning and will be back before a judge on Friday. But given the revolving door he’s already been through and his previous journey around the justice system, cops aren’t confident about their ability to keep him off the streets for long.
“I suspect this will be taken out of our hands and it will end up back in mental health courts,” Laing concludes. “I’m frustrated and my fear is this will continue until he kills somebody.”
Dabiri has yet to be convicted in this latest case.
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