A forensic psychiatrist who assessed Richard Edwin, a Toronto man on trial for two counts of first-degree murder, says he does not qualify for a defence of not criminally responsible (NCR), even though she believes he was psychotic at the time of the two shootings.
Dr. Alina Iosif testified Thursday that she met with Edwin on two occasions earlier this year to assess his criminal responsibility in relation to the fatal shootings of 21-year-old Kartik Vasudev at Sherbourne TTC station on April 7, 2022, and 35-year-old Elijah Mahepath on Dundas near Sherbourne street on April 9, 2022. Both victims were strangers to Edwin.
Iosif said while she found Edwin to be credible from a psychiatric perspective, a few facts about the case gave her pause.
Iosif referred to her report in which she wrote, “It was unclear why Mr. Edwin reviewed extremist materials in the months leading up to the offences. His explanation that calling his father a day before the murders about travelling to Jamaica was a ‘coincidence’ was suspicious.”
Iosif said it was also unclear why — if, as Edwin reported, he was heading for the woods — he alighted at Sherbourne Station. “Such facts may suggest that Mr. Edwin’s account is not entirely truthful, and there may have been more planning to his actions than he led me to believe,” Iosif wrote.
Iosif also noted that Edwin took measures to avoid police detection, including changing his clothes after the shootings. “He admitted to having realized ‘in a way’ that he was in trouble,” she wrote in her report.
Edwin told Iosif he began hearing voices from the white supremacist community in his head, who told him to go to the woods or he would be shot. He told Iosif that he packed his tent, peanut butter and his AR-15 long rifle in his backpack and left his apartment and got off at Sherbourne Station. While he was there, a voice from the “body language sign community” told him to shoot Vasudev.
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Two days later, while selling Black history pamphlets on the street, Edwin told Iosif he heard a voice telling him to shoot again. He said he went home and practiced shooting in front of the mirror before changing his clothes and heading out. Iosif said it was roughly seven hours later when he shot Elijah Mahepath multiple times, after Edwin said he heard a voice that told him to shoot.
The forensic psychiatrist testified that she felt Edwin failed all the branches of the criminal responsibility test and appeared to know his actions were wrong according to society’s standards.
Along with the call to his father the day before shooting Vasudev, and issues with his explanation for getting off at Sherbourne Station while heading for the woods, she found it problematic that the backpack he was carrying in the videos was big enough to carry a tent, emergency supplies, and a large rifle.
“I think there’s evidence that Mr Edwin was in a type of self-defence mode or preservationist mode for a long time leading up to the index offences and he was perhaps contemplating violence for a long time leading up to the index offences,” Iosif added.
She pointed out that he said he had a mission to fight the white supremacists for several years. While she didn’t believe he was feigning symptoms, Iosif testified that Edwin made a choice to follow what he heard. “I think that at the same time, he was assessing and he knew that other members of society, his family included, would view it as wrong.”
“To have this notion that Edwin blindly follows things without thinking for himself is not supported by the evidence,” she said.
She also pointed out that Edwin made no mention of what she told forensic psychiatrist Dr. Lisa Ramshaw during her interview for criminal responsibility about the motivation for his shootings.
In that interview, Edwin told Ramshaw that if he didn’t kill the victims, bombs would be dropped on Jamaica or St. Lucia or he would be killed by white supremacists attacking from Ukraine.
“This is a big issue. If we say that Mr. Edwin’s motivating factor, that the engine that drove his behaviour was fear from himself that he would be killed or the Caribbean would be destroyed by bombs, I want to him talk about that repeatedly, that is not a small thing,” said Ramshaw.
Ramshaw, a witness for the defence, concluded that Edwin did qualify for the NCR defence.
The trial continues.
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