IN-DEPTH: A Look at the Suspects Behind Random Attacks in Canada, Many With Long Criminal Histories

Antonio Magalhaes (R) and his wife, Andrea, take part in a candlelight walk toward Keele Station where their 16-year-old son, Gabriel, was killed in a random attack, in Toronto on March 30, 2023. Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press

Canadians have been falling victim to unprovoked attacks by strangers with increasing frequency—in the middle of the day, in stores, or walking down the street. A man in London, Ont., was even stabbed while sitting in his car waiting for a train to pass.

Some say Canada’s growing drug problem is to blame, with drug-induced psychosis sending addicts on violent rampages. Others say the problem is a lax criminal justice system that allows the most violent to repeatedly offend.

“The trend of Canada releasing repeat violent offenders back onto our streets, who then go out and commit more and increasingly violent crimes up to and including murder, is literally a feature—not a bug—of our system,” said documentary filmmaker Aaron Gunn in an interview with The Epoch Times.

In his recently released documentary “Canada Is Dying,” Gunn presents what he sees as one of the most shocking cases of a repeat violent offender.

Kirkland Russell of Chilliwack, B.C., had over 50 convictions when he fatally stabbed Doug Presseau, who had stepped in to help Russell’s girlfriend as he was attacking her. Russell received a sentence of eight years for the 2017 murder.

“When you have that many convictions, I don’t understand how our justice system can allow him to be out walking the streets. My son should never have been murdered,“ Presseau’s mother told Gunn in ”Canada Is Dying.”

In his film, Gunn looked at both the drug and criminal justice causes behind random attacks, and says the fault lies within the system.

“This is something that our system is designed to do and it’s been happening with increasing frequency over the past 20 years,” he said.

The Epoch Times delved into the stories behind these attacks in an effort to discover the causes. Information about suspects was often hard to come by, but what information is available shows many of the random attacks are by people well-known to the justice system.

Manitoba’s courts were forthcoming with information, including the detailed criminal records for any named suspects. British Columbia’s courts, on the other hand, would not provide any information on cases before the court.

Manitoba

In Winnipeg on the afternoon of March 10, Julius Kincaid Kilbourne, 28, stabbed a stranger at random in a downtown store. Moments later, he stabbed a second stranger on the street.

He was in an “intoxicated state,” police said in a press release, but there was no indication whether drugs specifically were involved. Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson Ally Siatecki told The Epoch Times the police could not provide any further information on Kilbourne or the incident.

However, Justice of the Peace Services Director Cheryl Paulic sent The Epoch Times Kilbourne’s long list of previous convictions.

The earliest on record are 2013 convictions for assault with a weapon, breaking and entering, and theft, for which he received three years of supervised probation. In the same year, he had multiple convictions of “failure to comply” with the conditions of his probation, along with a few 30-day stints in jail.

In 2014, Kilbourne was found guilty on two charges of assault with a weapon and a failure to comply, and spent a little over 100 days in custody. From 2015 onward he racked up convictions of aggravated assault, escaping custody, identity fraud, forcible entry, five counts of failure to comply with a weapons prohibition, and multiple incidents of obstruction and resisting a police officer.

Over the years, Kilbourne’s penalties included some minor fines, a few stints of “time served” from 30 to 60 days, some periods of time “in custody” usually lasting between one to 45 days. He spent 113 days in custody in 2019 after an assault conviction, and 180 days in 2020 after a similar verdict.

Most recently, just a few months before he allegedly stabbed the two people at random on March 10, he was found guilty of four weapons offences “possibly for a dangerous purpose.”

A week before Kilbourne’s alleged attacks, another young man attacked four people in downtown Winnipeg at random.

“Through their investigation, officers determined the suspect randomly approached the victims and physically attacked them without provocation. The suspect and victims were not previously known to one another,” a police release said.

The suspect was “released on an undertaking as mandated by the Criminal Code,” the release said.

No charges have been laid and police could not name the 22-year-old male suspect, Cst. Dani McKinnon of the Winnipeg Police Service told The Epoch Times via email.

Winnipeg police released the city’s 2022 crime statistics on May 30, 2023. Offenders on bail accounted for one in five violent crimes. Total crime increased more than 25 percent from 2021 to 2022, and rose 17 percent above the five-year average. Violent crimes by a stranger were up more than 44 percent.

British Columbia

In Vancouver, police have reported similar statistics.

“We’ve noticed what appears to be an uptick in unprovoked stranger attacks,” the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) said in a 2021 tweet.

The VPD reviewed assault cases for the period of Sept. 1, 2020, to Aug. 31, 2021, and found that about 1,555 were unprovoked stranger assaults involving 1,705 victims.

Not all attacks involve extreme violence such as stabbing, but the Vancouver area has had its share of major incidents.

For example, Jaal Routh Kueth, 30, of Surrey was charged with second-degree murder for allegedly stabbing a stranger in Vancouver’s Chinatown on Feb. 6.

The province’s daily court list for June 9 showed Kueth was in court not only for the murder charge, but also for breach of probation. He was on probation for an aggravated assault with a weapon.

Alberta

The perpetrator in a fatal attack in Edmonton on May 5 reportedly had a violent history, including multiple other random attacks—one just a month before he killed a mother and her child outside a school.

Muorater Mashar, 33, was convicted of stabbing a man in the back at a bus stop in 2014, according to the Edmonton Journal. He served a sentence of almost four years, and while in prison he allegedly assaulted inmates and an officer.

Mashar had an “entrenched criminal lifestyle, extensive history of non-compliance, ongoing problematic behaviour in the community, limited gains from programming, and previously failed releases,” according to parole board documents viewed by the Journal.

The board also noted his history of drug abuse and mental illness, including Tourette’s Syndrome and narcissistic personality disorder.

In April, he allegedly attacked a man with a scooter. Charges against him were stayed only two days before he stabbed 35-year-old Carolann Robillard and her 11-year-old child outside Crawford Plains School on May 5. He had previously tried to enter the school.

Mashar died in hospital five days later of police-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Edmonton police and Alberta Courts told The Epoch Times they couldn’t confirm the above information or provide any information on other random-attack suspects.

Ontario

In Ontario, information is scarce on some suspects, including Leah Valdez, the 43-year-old woman arrested in the Jan. 24 stabbing of a woman on a Toronto streetcar.

The few court documents available for several Toronto-area suspects have scant information, and that information is under a publication ban, but The Epoch Times can report that a few of the suspects failed to comply with previous court orders.

Peel Regional Police reported that David Dytlow, who allegedly stabbed a 19-year-old boy at random in Mississauga on Jan. 10, has been charged not only with attempted murder, but also three counts of failure to comply with bail conditions.

“At the time of his arrest, Dytlow was on judicial release for several criminal offences, including assault, assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm and uttering threats. One of these incidents took place in Peel Region in 2021, where Dytlow is alleged to have stabbed an individual. Dytlow was prohibited from carrying weapons,” police said in a press release.

Jordan O'Brien-Tobin, who is accused in the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Gabriel Magalhaes in Toronto on March 25, was also a repeat violent offender. He had more than 20 different accusations in 2021 alone, including multiple alleged assaults, sexual assault, and harassment, according to CTV News. Toronto police and the Ontario courts said they couldn’t confirm the information.

A memorial for 16-year-old Gabriel Magalhaes, victim of a random stranger attack, at the Keele Street subway station in Toronto on March 27, 2023. The Canadian Press/Sharif Hassan

Bail Reform Not ‘Meaningful Change’

Although the federal government has introduced Bill C-48 to reform the bail system, some say it’s not enough.

Criminal defence lawyer Ari Goldkind told The Epoch Times it won’t change much for him in the majority of his cases.

Currently, the onus is on the prosecutor to prove why the suspect shouldn’t get bail, but C-48 reverses the onus, making it so the defence must prove why the suspect should get bail.

“That may be of some moment, but none of this scratches the surface of any meaningful change,” Goldkind said.

He said many repeat offenders will still be able to get bail and lighter penalties based on race.

“It’s embedded in our bail system and our case law that judges and justices of the peace must consider the race and/or indigenous background of an offender,” Goldkind said.

This is a tool he has in his “toolbox” when representing a client, he said. And Justice Minister David Lametti has said that C-48 should not significantly affect this approach. “We want to make sure that these law reforms do not make things worse for indigenous people, black people, and other vulnerable groups,” he told a news conference on May 16.

Law enforcement officials in B.C. told Gunn it’s the same small number of people committing the vast majority of the crimes. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made a similar statement speaking to reporters in Ottawa on Feb. 9.

“If you could just take those 40 violent offenders off the street, you’d have 6,000 fewer victims of violent crime,” he said.