Toronto police have arrested a man they say is responsible for stabbing another man in a random attack on St. George’s Station on Tuesday night.
Police announced the arrest of 23-year-old Dante Easterbrook from Toronto on Wednesday night.
He is accused of assault with a weapon.
“We would like to thank the TTC for their assistance in obtaining the surveillance images, which have helped our investigators greatly in trying to locate the suspect,” said a Toronto police spokesman. Laura Brabant.
“We shared this image with the public, which was really great. And we just want to thank everyone who provided advice and information in this investigation that helped bring us to arrest in a good and timely way. “
The stabbing, which police believe was unprovoked, sent a 30-year-old man to hospital. The victim, Mario Greco, was later released after being found to have received only a bodily injury in the attack.
Greco spoke to CP24 on Wednesday afternoon, recounting what happened at the TTC station. He said he had only had brief contact with his attacker and had no idea what could have motivated the attack.
He recalled that he was sitting on a bench on the platform with a woman with whom he had just gone on a first date around 11:20 p.m.
Greco said they were preparing to split up and board trains moving in opposite directions when a man sat down next to them and asked the woman where she was going.
His meeting, Greco said, essentially told the man it was none of his business. But in an attempt to “spread the strange request” and be “kind,” he said he decided to ask the man where he was going, which led to an extremely brief conversation.
“He started to get up and left at random, and I said, you know, ‘success,’ and I resumed the conversation with my meeting,” Greco recalled. “Five minutes later, I accidentally felt something on my neck out of nowhere.”
The stabbing at St. George’s Station is just the latest random attack on the city’s subway in recent days, following a separate incident in which a woman was pushed onto the tracks at Bloor-Yonge Station on Sunday.
A 45-year-old Toronto woman has been charged with attempted murder in the incident.
A third incident eight days ago at Pioneer Village involved a suspect who strangled an unconscious man and robbed him.
Speaking to CP24 on Wednesday afternoon, Greco said he did not immediately grasp the gravity of the situation after the stabbing, not even realizing what had happened at first.
When he did, he said he immediately went to the “worst case scenario” and feared he could die on the platform, doing his best to put pressure on the wound while seeking help.
“It made me feel like an accidental sting from a bee or a doctor doing blood tests (in the beginning), but I said to myself, ‘Okay, I’m at a metro station, this is a random person, I’ve never met him before and he’s stabbing something in the neck.’ we. Mario, they’re stabbing you right now. That struck me at that moment, “he said, noting that he recognized suspects from their previous interactions. “I’m very lucky. I definitely had God on my side and I would like other people who, you know, have been in similar situations, to have the same blessing, the same shot in life.”
On Wednesday, a large white bandage around his neck was the only indicator of what had happened the night before.
Before the arrest was announced, Greco hoped that the police would quickly catch the suspects in the knife stabbing to prevent injuring someone else.
But he said he did not want the random nature of what happened to him to make people too scared while living their lives.
“We can’t allow scary scenarios like what I’ve been through to affect other people’s lives in the sense that they live with fear, because when you live with fear, it spreads fear,” he said. “We need to remember beauty. that we have in this world and do not be deterred by terrible circumstances like what happened. “
Meanwhile, the TTC says it will focus on special police patrols and other surveillance resources “in and around the subway system” in light of recent violent incidents.
“TTC is safe in all global measurements. “We move hundreds of millions of customers every year without incident, but we never take that for granted, so we’re constantly looking for ways to make the system even safer,” spokesman Stuart Green told CP24 earlier Wednesday. “Some of this is cyclical – we saw a few years ago that the cases were quite large on the bus network, so we made special police officers spend more of their time on the bus network.”
Green said there are 40 to 50 special police officers patrolling the system at any one time, and another 56 special police officers will be trained and ready to enter service by the end of 2022.
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