A quiet suburban strip mall turned into a bloody scene of chaos in Brampton yesterday, as two people were stabbed to death in broad daylight, including a bystander who tried to intervene in an apparent marital dispute.
Their suspected killer, a 28-year-old man, was under arrest in hospital last night, recovering from knife wounds he inflicted on himself before a police officer used a taser to subdue him.
Because police were present when the suspect was injured, the provincial Special Investigations Unit , which examines police-related injuries and deaths, is also investigating.
The gruesome events unfolded over the noon hour in the parking lot of the Red Maple Plaza, a nondescript neighbourhood retail centre that also houses a Montessori school and a dental office, near McLaughlin Road and Williams Parkway northwest of Toronto.
As merchants and customers went about their business, someone noticed a man and woman arguing outside, and Peel Region police were called at 12:35 p.m. The woman was stabbed, and when a male passerby intervened, he too was attacked.
Both had no vital signs by the time emergency workers arrived.
"Our officer attended and as a result of that he had a confrontation with the suspect," Peel police spokesman Constable J.P. Valade said.
Frank Phillips, spokesman for the SIU, said the man "was harming himself" as a police sergeant approached him. "The officer deployed a taser to stop the man from doing so," Mr. Phillips said at the scene several hours later, as the dead woman's body remained under yellow and white blankets several metres behind him. The body of the good Samaritan was believed to be inside one of the businesses, where it might have been "relocated during the chaos of the initial call," Constable Valade said.
Police were withholding the names of the dead until their families could be notified.
Witnesses, most of whom were taken away by police to give statements shortly after the killings, were shaken by the sudden burst of violence outside the otherwise quiet plaza, which is surrounded by a uniform horizon of residential rooftops on homes less than a decade old.
Habiba Syed was at work inside the Bestway Food Market in the plaza's corner unit when she heard screaming. When she went outside to investigate, she saw a black man stab himself in the neck with a bloody knife, then slump to the ground, shouting, "My wife is dead, my wife is dead."
Amarik Mangar, a pizza maker at City North Pizza, said he saw people fighting outside, and that a man working in the neighbouring Majha Meat Shop called 911. Moments later, "I see one lady on [the]ground," Mr. Mangar said, adding that she was white, heavyset and not moving.
Grazyna Kmiecik, owner of the Strands hair salon, said she had just stepped out to get a coffee when she took a call from Claudio Lazalotta, a frantic employee.
"Claudio was just screaming to me on the phone to come back because there was blood, and he was very upset," Ms. Kmiecik said.
The double slaying pushed Peel's homicide tally for 2008 to 11. There had been four at the same time last year.
Compared to some fast-growing Toronto-area suburbs, the ethnically diverse area around the plaza is settled, with roughly the same number of residents in the 2006 census as it had in the 2001 count.
Yesterday, many of those residents gathered in knots on driveways, along sidewalks and on the grass around the plaza, just outside a cordon of yellow crime-scene tape, as forensic investigators went about their grim duties.