Calvin Barry defends Rohinie BISESAR

Calvin Barry

Bisesar made her first court appearance yesterday (pictured) to be charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3364883/MBA-graduate-accused-stabbing-random-woman-chest-felt-need-extreme-charged-MURDER-28-year-old-victim-dies.html#ixzz3uzZEnkV6
 

Rohinie Bisesar, charged with second-degree murder, to stay in custody until new year

Aileen Donnelly | December 18, 2015 2:58 PM ET
More from Aileen Donnelly | @aileendonnelly

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The woman charged over the apparently random and unprovoked fatal stabbing in Toronto’s financial district is “like a deer in the headlights,” her lawyer said after she made a brief court appearance Friday morning.

Courtesy of Karl Gutowski

Rohinie Bisesar's mental health has deteriorated in the last several years, a friend says.

The charge against Rohinie Bisesar was upgraded to second-degree murder after her alleged victim died five days after the attack in a Shopper’s Drug Mart in the city’s underground PATH system.
“It’s tragic all around,” her lawyer, Calvin Barry said outside court. He expressed sympathy for the family of the 28-year-old victim, Rosemarie Junor.

If found guilty, Bisesar faces a minimum sentence of life in prison with no parole for between 10 and 25 years.

“We’ve kind of gone from a one to a 10 in terms of severity,” Barry said of the murder charge.

Sketch by Pam DaviesRohinie Bisesar handcuffed enters court with her lawyer Calvin Barry, centre, at College Park court Wednesday.

Bisesar smiled slightly as she walked into the courtroom and was led into the prisoner’s box. She was dressed in a dark green sweatsuit that hung off her petite frame. She is about 4-foot-11 and weighs about 85 pounds, her lawyer said.

Bisesar did not address the court, but whispered something to her lawyer before she was led out.
She will be held at a prison in Milton, Ont., until her next court appearance on Jan. 8. Her lawyer said it has been hard to confer with his “meek and quiet” client while she has been in custody, surrounded by other prisoners.

“Everybody’s yelling and screaming,” he said. “It’s similar to American TV.”

Aileen Donnelly / National Post“It’s tragic all around,” Rohinie Bisesar's lawyer, Calvin Barry, said outside court.

Barry said he’s been unable to assess his client’s mental state or whether she understands what’s going on.

But she is “very upset — she’s like a deer in the headlights,” he said.

A friend said that Bisesar had struggled with mental illness in recent years, and was hospitalized in 2014.

Although she graduated with an MBA from York University’s Schulich School of Business, she struggled to find work in the financial sector, Karl Gutowski said.

The Crown dropped all other charges against Bisesar, because, as Barry said, a charge for carrying a concealed weapon is “like a parking ticket” compared to second-degree murder.

Police allege Bisesar stabbed Junor last Friday afternoon, fatally wounding the young newlywed.
Police say the two did not know each other.

FacebookRosemarie Junor in an undated photo.

Junor, who also went by “Kim,” was described by friends, former colleagues and family as “dedicated” and “glowing.”

Her brother, Richard Junor, told CTV News that “she was a very kind, loving, caring person.”

“She was young, energetic and hardworking,” he said. “She just got married, got a house, (was) planning to have a family and we’re all sorry that she’s gone so early.”

The Junor family has set up an online fundraising account to help cover funeral costs.

With files from Richard Warnica, National Post and The Canadian Press

Accused in knife attack smiles in court

By Michele Mandel, Toronto Sun

First posted: Friday, December 18, 2015 11:50 AM EST | Updated: Friday, December 18, 2015 10:05 PM EST     

Now charged with second-degree murder, Rohinie Bisesar made another brief appearance in a downtown bail court, wearing her strange smile along with a prison-issue green sweatsuit too large for her tiny frame.

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

Suspect in downtown stabbing dressed for success but was broke and homeless

SELENA ROSS

TORONTO — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Dec. 18, 2015 11:19AM EST

Last updated Friday, Dec. 18, 2015 10:42PM EST

Rohinie Bisesar appears in court in front of Justice W. Agnew in Toronto on Dec.16 in this artist's sketch.
(Alexandra Newbould/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

 

Panhandlers sit on every block of lower Bay Street, congregating with cardboard signs near the doors of glass skyscrapers in Canada’s financial capital.

 

Rohinie Bisesar used to be one of the well-dressed thousands passing by. In an immaculate black suit and dress shirt, the MBA holder would go into the Starbucks on Yonge Street frequented by Toronto Mayor John Tory or set up at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, working on her tablet.

 

But she acted oddly, according to those who encountered her during these years, giving out cards with the names of fake businesses and sometimes putting out a sign soliciting financial clients. She seemed penniless, ordering hot water and asking near-strangers if she could crash on their couch.

 

The truth was that Ms. Bisesar, 40, spent her nights much like the panhandlers did, sleeping on subway trains and in the maze of tunnels and shops beneath the financial district, where she had once worked. But, during the day, she strove to find her next job in finance: showering, laundering her single suit and reading about the economy.

 

Her charade ended just before 3 p.m. last Friday, when, police allege, Ms. Bisesar walked with a kitchen knife into a Shoppers Drug Mart in an underground concourse and stabbed a stranger, 28-year-old Rosemarie (Kim) Junor, several times in the chest with “no provocation.” Ms. Junor, a recent bride, died five days later.

 

On Friday, when Ms. Bisesar appeared in court to be charged with second-degree murder, her lawyer, Calvin Barry, said he had not been able to assess his client’s mental state or whether she understands what’s going on, The Canadian Press reported.

 

But he said she is “very upset – she’s like a deer in headlights.”

 

Although many people say they noticed the deterioration of Ms. Bisesar, a onetime computer technician at York University, it was harder to know what to do about it. She was in hospital at one point, said one of the few friends who remained in touch with her in recent months. But she spoke about her homelessness as a rough patch, and if she realized she was struggling with serious mental-health issues, she never talked openly about it, York mathematics professor Trueman MacHenry said.

“It’s very frequently regarded as kind of a nasty thing … it’s not like having a bad cold or something. She never brought it up and I never suspected a thing,” he said.

 

Dr. MacHenry, now in his 80s, met Ms. Bisesar when she worked at York in her early 20s, a self-taught tech whiz who fixed his computer. For the past two years, he has provided cash for her occasional coffee and food.

 

“She was very friendly, she was very good with people, she was bright,” he said. “Everybody who knows about [the stabbing] at work feels very badly, and I almost had a nervous breakdown over it.”

It is extremely rare for people with mental illness to become suddenly violent – so rare that it is nearly impossible to study the phenomenon, because the sample size is so small, said Robert Whitley, a psychiatry professor at McGill University.

 

But when it happens, it tends to be after the person has begun losing touch with the social and medical system, he said. People receiving care are no more dangerous than anyone else.

“One factor that we do often see is that people have been in treatment, and they’ve gotten out of treatment and … they’ve fallen through the cracks,” he said. “And for one reason or another they get into a crisis.”

 

Studies show that people working in white-collar industries often try to hide mental-health problems, he said. For good reason: It has also been shown that people receive fewer promotions when they are known to have a mental illness.

 

“Sadly, a lot of the public think that having a mental illness and being intelligent or being successful is incommensurable,” Dr. Whitley said. “The research does show that as you become more professional and revolve in more highly educated circles, that a lot of effort does go into managing appearances and into concealment.”

 

But if people avoid treatment, it can have “a sort of spiraling effect,” he said.

 

Ms. Bisesar received her MBA in 2007 from York’s Schulich School of Business, and, in 2010, she got a job at financial-services company GMP Capital, her friend Karl Gutowski told the National Post. She was in the job for only eight months.

 

In the following years, she racked up credit-card debt and was dumped by her live-in boyfriend, Dr. MacHenry said. That was when she got in touch, bluntly telling the professor she was broke.

 

“I tried to keep her from starving to death,” he said. He took her for meals, the last just a couple of weeks ago at Jules Bistro, a French restaurant on Spadina Avenue. They would talk about politics and finance, and Ms. Bisesar explained her street life of sorts.

 

“She camped out in the lounge of the Ritz-Carlton, which was a little above my means,” Dr. MacHenry said. She bought a gym membership downtown, using it as a place to bathe and sleep until staff asked her to stop. Then she tried sleeping on the subway, a dangerous situation that “she disliked very much,” he said. Dr. MacHenry believed she slept in corners of the underground city and she told him she couch-surfed. The idea of staying in a shelter never came up: “She was kind of a patrician,” he said.

 

He encouraged her to enroll in a city program to get assistance, and she finally did, receiving money this fall for rent and moving in with someone she knew. But “he came onto her, and I don’t know if she moved out or what she did. She was angry,” Dr. MacHenry said.

 

She never strayed from her daily routine, favouring the Starbucks at 1 Adelaide St. E. in recent months. She arrived early in the morning and stayed until closing at 6:30 p.m., said a man who works at the building. “She lived here.”

 

Jenny Yang, who works at a financial consulting firm there, said Ms. Bisesar appeared one day to drop off her résumé – but seeking work that way is unheard-of at a boutique firm like that. Staff at another Starbucks location recalled her sitting at a communal table with a sign advertising financial-advice services.

 

Ms. Bisesar’s parents, originally from Guyana, live near Woodbine Avenue and own a small shop on Danforth Avenue. They did not answer knocks at their door this week and are known locally as a private couple. Their next-door neighbour for 30 years said he never knew their names until their daughter was arrested this week.

 

Dr. MacHenry said she told him recently her family had thrown her out, but he learned this week they had tried to get her medical help and she had spent some time in a hospital. An aunt and uncle had also taken her in and tried to help her financially. Ms. Bisesar told friends she did not want to go back to the hospital, he said.

 

A message sent to the National Post this week from Ms. Bisesar’s e-mail address apologized for the stabbing and asked for help finding professionals in “artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, satellites,” military or government.

 

“Something has been happening to me and this is not my normal self and I would like to know who and why this is happening,” the writer of the e-mail said. “I am sorry about the incidence. I felt the need to be extreme to see if it would work. I would normally not do such a thing.”

 

On Friday morning, Dr. MacHenry sat quietly at Ms. Bisesar’s court appearance as his friend, less than 100 pounds, was led before the judge.

 

He said that earlier this week, when he saw a police news release with Ms. Bisesar’s photo, he thought his “worst fears” had come true and she had been killed. A friend said, no, she was the suspect. “And then I felt even worse,” he said.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/toronto-woman-charged-in-fatal-stabbing-to-remain-in-custody/article27844715/

Rohinie Bisesar, now charged with 2nd-degree murder, 'very upset,' lawyer says

Rosemarie Junor, 28, identified as victim of random attack CBC News Posted: Dec 18, 2015 10:34 AM ET| Last Updated: Dec 18, 2015 11:25 AM ET

Rohinie Bisesar, 40, made a brief court appearance on Friday. She is now charged with second-degree murder in the death of 28-year-old Rosemarie Junor. (Pam Davies)

Rohinie Bisesar's lawyer said his client, held in custody on a second-degree murder charge, is like a "deer in the headlights" at the moment.

Bisesar, 40, is now charged with second-degree murder of 28-year-old Rosemarie Junor, who was stabbed to death inside a Shoppers Drug Mart in the downtown PATH system last week.

Dressed in a green sweater, she appeared to be be smiling slightly as she entered the courtroom for a brief appearance this morning.

The criminal charges against Bisesar were upgraded after Junor died in hospital on Wednesday night.

• Stabbing victim Rosemarie Junor 'fought a great battle,' says brother behind fundraiser
• Rosemarie Junor, PATH stabbing victim, was a newlywed

Police have identified Rosemarie Junor, 28, as the victim of last Friday's stabbing. Junor died in hospital on Wednesday. (Toronto Police)

 

Calvin Barry, Bisesar's lawyer, called the situation "tragic all around" and admitted the upgraded charges will make it far more difficult for his client to get bail.

"We've kind of gone from a one to 10 in terms of severity," he said.

Barry said Bisesar, who is being held at a detention centre in Milton, Ont., is "very upset" right now and said he's worried that the "meek and quiet" woman is struggling to cope in jail.

Barry wouldn't comment on whether Bisesar has had a psychiatric evaluation, nor if she's fully aware of what she's accused of.

Police allege Bisesar brought a knife with her into the store and stabbed Junor, critically injuring the young woman last Friday afternoon. Junor died in hospital on Wednesday.

Police have said there's no apparent connection between Junor and the accused.
Bisesar was arrested on Tuesday.

She's set to appear in court again on Jan. 8, 2016, at Old City Hall.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rohinie-bisesar-court-1.3371427

 

Accused in PATH stabbing appears in court