They are the madmen in our midst.
In a downtown Toronto courtroom, another killer has been found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder; another stranger dead because a severely ill person didn’t receive the care they needed to keep the rest of us safe.
The latest is Dylan Sherief, 32, who has been found NCR for the second-degree murder of Nicola Maiorano, a 57-year-old stranger he targeted on the Danforth and suddenly stabbed in the neck on Dec. 6, 2022.
The story is a tragedy on all sides.
According to the recent ruling by Superior Court Justice Maureen Forestell, Sherief was raised in a supportive and loving family, graduated high school and was admitted to university. It was during his first year in 2016, at the age of 23, that he began hearing voices that have plagued him ever since.
As early as 2017, he described feeling a “voodoo presence” while lying in bed. He was hospitalized that year — and six more times after that, with most committals being involuntary.
But as soon as he was released, Sherief would stop taking his anti-psychotic medications. He told his family the meds stopped him from fighting the evil elements threatening to possess his mind.
“Mr. Sherief’s family made every effort to get treatment for Mr. Sherief. They repeatedly brought him to the hospital,” the judge wrote.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Sherief has always lacked insight into his mental illness. He believed, and continues to believe, that he does not have a mental illness but that there are supernatural forces causing his symptoms. Mr. Sherief has always been non-compliant with medication upon discharge from the hospital. As a result, although he improved with treatment, he repeatedly deteriorated upon discharge from the hospital when he became non-compliant.”
His last hospital admission was in October 2022 where he was noted to be agitated, violent and aggressive. With a new medication cocktail that improved his delusions, he was discharged to his grandparents on Nov. 9, 2022 — about a month before the fatal stabbing.
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After a week, he slipped away while his grandmother was asleep and went to live with his friend, Donovan Comeau, leaving his medication behind.
This is the same friend with whom he was charged with impersonating “border police” and interrogating motorists earlier in 2022, Forestell said.
Sherief began to experience command hallucinations telling him to kill someone or they’d steal his soul. The judge wrote that Comeau bought him a knife and offered to help find a victim. A homeless man was brought to their apartment but Sherief said he couldn’t go through with it.
On the night of Dec. 5, 2022, the voices told him he had until midnight to kill someone. He saw Maiorano walking unsteadily on Danforth Ave. and approached him to buy drugs. “Mr. Sherief reported that he hesitated and did not feel he could bring himself to kill the man,” Forestell wrote. “However, he suddenly took the knife and stabbed Mr. Maiorano. He explained that he was forced to do so to end the ‘supernatural torture.’ He told the psychiatrists it was ‘him or me.’”
Forestell deemed him NCR after two different psychiatrists agreed Sherief suffers from schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, was likely experiencing intense psychotic symptoms at the time and was incapable of realizing the wrongfulness of his actions.
This latest finding follows so many last year.
In December, Ryan Cunneen was found not criminally responsible for the unprovoked January 2023 shoving death of 89-year-old Xiaoxia Wang on Yonge St. because the homeless man was suffering from untreated schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.
Last summer, Daniel Pestill was ruled NCR due to a mental disorder for shooting Oshawa cabbie Mike Ryan, 57, in the back because he believed he was part of a secret society.
In June, Forestell agreed with the Crown and defence that Tenzin Norbu was not criminally responsible for setting fire to Nyima Dolma, 28, on a TTC bus, due to being actively psychotic at the time as a result of undiagnosed schizophrenia. Earlier last year, she also accepted a joint submission that Temeka Dorsett was NCR after she stabbed her neighbour, single mother Elsabet Yitayew, 37, because she believed she was trying to poison her.
Later this month, another judge will rule whether Kyle Sequeira is NCR in the vicious stabbing deaths of his parents.
And this frightening club of mentally ill killers could get larger still.