Daniella Mallia’s murder at the hands of her estranged partner has to mean something.
Because too many women are dying while the police look away.
“She asked only to move on with her life, to be left in peace,” Superior Court Justice Sean Dunphy said. “Her passionate pleas for help and the gravity of the danger she was in were misunderstood. It will be for others to study the lessons that her experience teaches us as a community.”
“It would compound the crime to fail to examine this experience and learn from it,” he added.
Showing no remorse or emotion as friends, co-workers and family poured out their pain, Dylon Dowman, 35, was sentenced Friday to an automatic life sentence with no eligibility of parole for 25 years. A jury found him guilty last week of first-degree murder in the Aug. 15, 2022 shooting of Mallia in an underground parking lot in Downsview just days after she’d turned to Toronto Police for help.
Despite the terrifying threats on her phone from Dowman – “You still breathing ’cause I say so. Don’t f— with me,” he texted. “Ain’t no coming back from death. Your done (sic). I promise you that“ – police dismissed her fears as a “he said-she said,” cautioned her and told her she was instigating the dispute.
Tim Ader and her other colleagues at Pet Valu in Bloor West Village spoke of Mallia as a ray of sunshine who was kind, caring and loyal. News of her murder was devastating, Ader said, especially knowing she had asked the police about how to keep herself safe.
They had urged her to give a formal statement, but Mallia didn’t want to send another Black man to prison, she wept. Instead of charging him, as they should have, they told her to have a good safety plan and get a peace bond.
“We knew she had tried to get help. We knew the police had turned their backs on her. We knew this long before it made headlines,” Ader told the court in his victim impact statement. “Her story can be a lesson to others and hopefully bring change to social services and policing.”
Const. Sang Youb Lee and his partner, Const. Anson Alfonso, were charged with misconduct-related offences under the Police Services Act for allegedly taking “no action to protect” Mallia despite having evidence to arrest Dowman for uttering threats. Lee pleaded guilty and was demoted for one year; Alfonso’s charges are still outstanding.
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The terrified Mallia had decided not to stay at home that day, but Dowman found her anyway. He lay in wait for 90 minutes until he saw her walking through a courtyard near Jane St., just north of Hwy. 401.
She had her headphones on and was listening to her favourite music – songs her colleagues now play at the store on the anniversary of her murder – as Dowman grabbed her and pulled her into an underground parking lot.
“After four minutes of listening to her plead for her life, he took it. He shot her in the head. Mercifully, she died almost instantly,” the judge said.
“Mr. Dowman stepped calmly over her body, packed his gun away, walked slowly to a nearby bus stop and then to a mall where he picked up an Uber and hoped to disappear,” Dunphy said. “This was a planned, pre-meditated killing.”
Tashawna Ingram fought back tears as she addressed the killer of her beloved older sister – her role model and protector.
“She loved you when she shouldn’t have. You didn’t deserve that, but you were lucky to receive it,” she told him.
Mallia was just 23 when he executed her because she dared to leave.
“I turn 25 this year,” Ingram said, “older than my role model; what made me better than her and get the chance to live longer than her? With everything she’s done with and for me, she deserves this life. But again, you took that from her.”
Nothing will heal the heartbreak of losing her sister, she said, and “25 years will never be enough for someone who feels no guilt.”
Offered an opportunity to address the court, the coward refused.
So, Mallia’s father, wearing a T-shirt with his daughter’s smiling face, had the last word.
“You get what you deserve,” Albert Ingram shouted at him. “You should get 50 on top of it.”