***Editor’s note: Story contains disturbing information***
Pedophile Lucas Petrini is the manifestation of your childhood nightmares, reimagined for 2025.
Kids were told before they left for school, back when we all walked, to watch out. Some people mean to do you serious, twisted harm.
Sometimes you ran from school to home, always wary of strangers and cars slowing down.
Lucas Petrini is the sum of those fears. On Monday, he was arrested by Toronto cops following what they euphemistically called “suspicious incidents.” The 34-year-old convicted sex offender was dinged with TEN counts of failing to comply with a long-term supervision order and two counts of assault.
None of the charges have been tested in court.
Cops suspect there may be more alleged victims.
In November 2008, a nine-year-old Brampton boy walking to school was snatched off the street at knifepoint and forced to endure an agonizing six-hour ordeal of sexual assault and terror. The accused was Lucas Petrini, 18.
He was convicted for the attack and sentenced to eight years in federal prison, followed by a 10-year long-term supervision order for kidnapping, sexual assault with a weapon, and uttering threats.
“You … subjected the child to repeated sexual assaults, including forced fellatio and anal intercourse,” a 2018 parole board decision reads, adding that Petrini had little chance of reintegrating into society.
The pedophile set alarm bells ringing for Kingston cops upon release in 2018 and they issued a public alert warning that Petrini was in the city and, by the way, his preference is for children under 14.
And now he’s on cops’ radar here in Toronto.
On Tuesday, Toronto Police took the rare step of releasing the convicted sex offender’s photo.
Cops say that between Feb. 13 and Monday, officers responded to three separate suspicious incident calls in the west end. The incidents involved kids invited to accompany a man to an unknown location. The kids fled.
On Saturday, two kids noticed they were being followed in the same area. A man tapped one on the shoulder and told them to accompany him. The quick-thinking kids started yelling and screaming and one was able to get away.
The second child, police said, was blocked but a passerby came to their rescue.
Finally, on Monday, another child was approached by an unknown male who tried to engage them in conversation. The gutsy kid pushed the man away and ran home,
Police allege the individual in all the incidents is Petrini.
According to the parole board, the pedophile’s time in prison was spent getting high, engaging in questionable relationships, flouting authority and having an existential struggle with the truth.
Outside the joint in Kingston, Petrini violated conditions of his long-term supervision order twice in 2019 and again in 2022.
The parole board noted: “Having considered all the relevant factors in your case, the board is satisfied that no appropriate program of supervision can be established that would adequately protect society from the risk of your reoffending.”
In late 2020 at yet another parole board go-round, it was noted he had an iPhone with a photo of a half-dressed boy along with sexualized cartoons. The cartoon was an image “of a child being orally impaled by an object consistent with what CSC described as a large penis.”
This all begs the question: If Petrini is so incorrigible, why has he been given so many chances?
Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-1100 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477), or at 222tips.com.
@HunterTOSun