Victim of Kits stranger attack shocked to learn suspect already released

The victim of a violent stranger assault at Kits Beach says she is concerned the suspect has already been released from custody.

Sila Tekin and her partner Misha Kleider were walking on the beach by the volleyball courts on Sunday afternoon when a man attacked her from behind, striking her in the head with a baseball bat-sized piece of wood.

“I apparently was hit from behind on the head,” Tekin said.

“My memory kind of cuts there and the next thing I remember is this kind of murky place where I was and I kind of, I could feel my partner was there, but I was kind of in and out of, I think, consciousness pretty much and then I remember waking up to the police officers at the hospital.”

Kleider said he heard yelling, he turned and then saw a man with a piece of wood hoisted over his head.

“And he brought it down on her skull,” he said.

When he tried to do it again, Kleider said he jumped in between the man and Tekin, who was clutching her head.

“She is down on her knees in pain,” he said. “He goes to swing again to finish the job. I jump between him. So then he is about to swing at me, and thinks better of it, and then backs off.”

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Kleider said he turned his attention to Tekin and other people rushed to help and she was taken to the hospital.

“She’s in and out of consciousness the whole time,” he said. “I’m thinking that she’s going to die, because she literally suffered an overhead swing as hard as this guy could muster, right to the skull, with a log the size of a baseball bat. So I’m thinking that she’s dying.”

Kleider added that he thought those were his partner’s last moments.

0:33 Charges laid over two stranger assaults in downtown Vancouver

A witness followed the suspect for a few blocks and 48-year-old Carlos Caldera Duarte was arrested near the Burrard Street Bridge.

Police recommended he be detained and the Crown also sought to keep him in custody for an overnight fitness assessment, but a judge released him on Tuesday.

“I was bewildered that this person who clearly almost killed me, is a maniac, is out, let out into the public without even figuring out what’s wrong with him,” Tekin said.

Kleider agreed, saying the decision to let him out was concerning.

“The assault unprovoked on the beach from behind by a guy with a club to her skull is obviously egregious, but equally disturbing to me is the response of the justice system,” he said.

“The failure, this guy, within less than two days, he’s back out after smashing her head in with a bat.”

Const. Darren Wong, with the Vancouver police, said they were frustrated to hear the news that Duarte was released.

He has no criminal record in B.C., but he is known to the police, who recommended he be detained.

But it is ultimately up to the courts to make that decision.

“They weigh in with their own risk assessment to decide: does this person pose a risk to the public?” Wong said. “In this case, we believe that he did.”

The Crown sought to keep Duarte in custody for an overnight fitness assessment, but it was denied.

He could not be reached at his Downtown Eastside address on Thursday.

His release conditions include staying away from Kits Beach, reporting to forensic psychiatric services and taking all medications prescribed.