A Toronto woman who was found not criminally responsible for a notorious 2015 stabbing death in a Shoppers Drug Mart has been granted an absolute discharge and is no longer under the supervision of the justice system.
An Ontario Review Board decision published last week ruled that Rohinie Bisesar no longer met the threshold required of being a significant threat to the safety of the public.
Bisesar was 40 years old when she stabbed Rosemarie Junor, 28, in the cosmetics section of a Shoppers Drug Mart in the city's financial district on the afternoon of Dec. 11, 2015.
The killing shocked the city. Bisesar, now 51, had earned an MBA and worked at one of Toronto's most prestigious investment firms. She was also only 4-foot-11 and weighed 85 pounds.
Police said the victim was speaking to a friend on her cellphone and browsing nail polish when she was stabbed once in the upper chest. Pharmacists treated her before paramedics arrived and rushed her to hospital.
Junor suffered a single stab wound that pierced her heart and died days later in hospital.
Bisesar was identified through security camera footage and arrested four days later. She remained in custody for three years before going on trial for murder.
An early court appearance by video link delayed proceedings when Bisesar ranted about terrorists and the prime minister.
By the end of the trial on Nov. 6, 2018, the Crown and defence agreed she was not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder. She was later diagnosed with schizophrenia.
According to the facts of the case, a voice in her head that she called the entity asked, 'What is the worst thing you can do?' She said the voice told her to get a knife. She then took the subway uptown, purchased a small kitchen knife at a discount store and returned downtown.
Bisesar said she sat on a bench beside a woman in the underground PATH system and thought about stabbing her, but the entity picked me up from the bench and had me start walking really fast. She entered the drug store, approached Junor and stabbed her before dropping the knife and quickly leaving.
A year before the killing, Bisesar had been hospitalized after threatening her parents with arson and expressing bizarre paranoid beliefs. She eventually lost her job and split up with her boyfriend, but continued to frequent the financial district and became a regular customer at downtown coffee shops, where she worked on a laptop.
Ms. Bisesar was then, however, floridly psychotic, untreated and desperately unwell at that time, the review board said.
After being found not criminally responsible, Bisesar was held in secure detention at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health until 2021. She was allowed to live in the community after being granted a conditional discharge in May 2023 following treatment for delusional disorder and chronic paranoid schizophrenia. To manage her mental health diagnosis, she takes two antipsychotic medications and her illness has been in sustained remission for several years.
Ms. Bisesar has been and is medication compliant, the decision states. She has listened to the forensic staff, faithfully attending critical therapy and psychotherapy. She lives in independent housing but is unemployed and financially supported by the Ontario Disability Support Program. However, she is engaged in volunteering and improving her education and hopes to find a job.
On April 23, Bisesar appeared before the review board from CAMH for her annual hearing. The board said a CAMH report dated March 20 included a letter from Bisesar expressing her desire to become a chartered financial analyst, along with three letters of reference.
In preliminary positions, the hospital took the position that the patient no longer represented a significant threat to the safety of the public and accordingly, an absolute discharge must issue, the decision states. A Crown counsel, who had followed the case for years, sought to hear evidence supporting that position.
By the conclusion of the hearing, after hearing the evidence and receiving submissions, and after carefully considering the safety of the public, the Board was satisfied that Ms. Bisesar, who has lived incident-free in the community since October 4, 2021, no longer met the threshold required of being a significant threat to the safety of the public. Accordingly, an absolute discharge was granted.
The board said her commitment to her present health has substantially contributed to this result.
