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After speaking quietly to her lawyer, she was handcuffed and ushered back to jail where she will spend the holidays — leaving a raft of unanswered questions in her wake.
How does it come to this: A 40-year-old brilliant MBA graduate with so much potential accused of the random, unprovoked fatal stabbing of a young newlywed in the city’s financial underground?
An unemployed woman known to frequent the area’s coffee shops and restaurants, spending her entire day in front of her laptop or trying to network with other customers when she wasn’t staring off into space. It seems that practically everyone who crossed her path found her “off.”
Were there warning signs? Where was her estranged family? Was there something someone could have done? Should have done?
Rosemarie “Kim” Junor died Wednesday night after days on life-support. She was just 28.
“My sister fought a great battle but her vibrant life was cut short,” her brother Miguel Junor wrote on a GoFundMe site seeking $25,000 to pay for her funeral costs.
“As a newlywed, Rosemarie was at the prime of her life and starting a family with her husband, Lenny Persaud, was supposed to be their next step together, not planning her funeral. All of those dreams were tragically taken from her.”
Defence lawyer Calvin Barry describes her alleged killer as “meek and quiet ... like a deer in the headlights.” He wouldn’t comment on whether she knew her alleged victim and wouldn’t address speculation about her mental state or whether he will seek a psychiatric assessment.
“It’s happened so quickly,” he told a media scrum outside the College Park courts. “We’ve gone from a one to a ten in terms of severity. It’s very tragic, the last couple of days, (for) the family of the deceased and it’s just tragic all around.”
For widow Zilla Parker, it is all too familiar.
Her 45-year-old husband Dominic was stabbed to death in a similar unprovoked attack in 2013. The off-duty Markham firefighter was at a Danforth Ave. cafe when Nabil Huruy, 26, attacked him.
“Losing Dominic in such a brutal violent way is the most difficult and traumatic event our family and likely many of our friends have ever experienced,” she wrote on Facebook.
On Dec. 10, Huruy was found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder. Justice Ian Nordheimer ruled the man, armed with two knives, was schizophrenic and hearing voices, unaware his actions were morally wrong. “He believed there were people, apparently on behalf of the government, who were intent on causing him harm, if not death,” the judge wrote.
So Parker’s widow was especially shaken when she learned of the shocking stabbing in the PATH system. “It sounds very similar; it’s hard to hear the same thing happening again,” she said in an interview.
But it reinforces her belief that we are not doing enough to deal with mental health issues in our society. Before stabbing Parker, Huruy had multiple interactions with police, members of the public and even a hospital, with all reporting him acting strangely.
Now she’s left wondering if her husband’s death could have been prevented.
“We need a lot more public awareness in how we deal with mental illness and how we get help earlier so we can prevent more tragedies like ours happening to other families,” she insists.
A plea that comes too late for a young newlywed. Bisesar returns to court Jan. 8.
— Read Mandel Wednesday through Saturday.
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/12/18/accused-in-knife-attack-smiles-in-court
