Vaughan gunman, 73, feuded with condo board over ‘electromagnetic waves.’ Victims include three board members

Thestar.com
Dec. 20, 2022
Alessia Passafiume
May Warren
Jennifer Pagliaro
Noor Javed
Betsy Powell

A mass shooting in a Vaughan condo that left six people dead, including the shooter, followed a years-long dispute between the shooter and the building’s board of directors -- and came one day before a court date seeking to have him removed from the building.

The legal fight was expected to come to a head on Monday at a hearing where the condo corporation was requesting that 73-year-old Francesco Villi vacate his unit temporarily as his alleged harassment continued.

York Regional Police were called to the high-end Bellaria Residences complex at 7:21 p.m. Sunday with reports of an active shooter. The incident ended when Villi was gunned down by a police officer. Heavily armed officers had rushed through the building to confront the shooter and safeguard units.

A surviving board member said he was unable to reach his colleagues -- police said three victims were members of the board.

“I knew he was a problem, but I didn’t think he was murderous,” board member Tony Cutrone said.

After the shooting, police officers “came in with rifles” to the unit he owns for his elderly mother “looking for me, making sure I was OK,” he said. His mother called him to ask what was going on, which is how he learned of the attack.

Little is known about the victims, three men and two women, who police said all lived in the building on Jane Street near Rutherford Road in Maple. Another woman, aged 66, was “seriously injured” but is expected to survive. According to a provincial registry, the condo board has five active members.

The shootings, which investigators say involved a semi-automatic handgun, took place across three separate units, police said, ending on the third floor where Villi was shot by a 24-year veteran of the force.

Though police are still investigating a motive for the murder, Villi’s ongoing confrontations with the condo board were well documented in a prolific string of disturbing social media posts, legal back-and-forth, and emails with city officials that detailed his unsubstantiated belief that board members were trying to kill him.

“We realize a crime of this magnitude is traumatizing for friends and family who at this time of year especially now must deal with the tragic death of their loved ones,” said York Regional Police Chief Jim MacSween at a Monday afternoon news conference.

The man’s complaints dated back at least five years, according to email correspondence with city officials obtained by the Star.

In a letter written by Villi and dated 2018, Villi said it was his “opinion” that the building had not been thoroughly inspected during construction. And in an attached blueprint showing part of a service room below his unit, he had handwritten his complaints in shaky capital letters: “This has caused me a lot of harm. 4 years. This electrical room was not built per this approved (drawing)!?” and “Done nothing.”

The emails, from 2019, show that both fire inspectors and Vaughan bylaw officers had visited his condo in both 2017 and 2018 and found no concerns. In 2018, a bylaw officer noted the service room was dirty as the result of a recently installed exhaust fan to minimize noise, and ordered that it be cleaned.

When the bylaw officer went for a reinspection a few weeks later, he found the service room clean. He was also told by the property manager that a new temperature thermostat was installed and a support added to the exhaust fan suspension to minimize the noise.

After the condo corporation complied, the file was closed.

In one email from Vaughan’s former fire chief, it was said a police mental health unit was involved but “he refused any additional services.”

Scene of a multiple homicide at Bellaria Residences II. Six people are dead after an "active shooter" incident at the Vaughan condo building.

Still, Villi persisted to publicly rail against the board, the building’s developers and related lawyers through his social media posts, despite a judge’s order that he refrain from doing so.

The posts are littered with Christian iconography and references, often beginning with an unintelligible string of mathematical symbols and emojis. He often wrote, in vague language, about “freedom of speech” and “justice,” while calling out those with whom he took issue. Pictures posted this November show what looks like a doctor’s note stating Villi had “chronic obstructive lung disease” alongside what appears to be multiple photos of bloody phlegm. He complained of the floor vibrating, his bed trembling and a lack of sleep.

In several selfie videos, Valli can be seen questioning lawyers who are trying to schedule mediation between him and the board and asking them whether they know God while claiming board members were “murdering” him for “self-interest and money.”

“They have harmed me enough for seven years,” he said in one video posted several hours before the shooting, but in which he says was filmed Dec. 13.

“They want me dead.”

Legal proceedings between Villi and the condo corporation date back to at least November 2018 when the corporation filed an application to “restrain Mr. Villi’s allegedly threatening, abusive, intimidating and harassing behaviour towards the Corporation’s board of directors, property management, workers and residents of the condominium,” a recent court decision outlines.

The following year, in June 2019, Villi filed his own lawsuit “relating to issues stemming from an electrical room beneath his unit and also relating to alleged oppressive conduct on the part of the corporation.”

Villi claimed several million dollars in documents filed without legal counsel. In his statement of claim, he makes a wild series of unsubstantiated allegations, including that he believed condo board members were trying to intentionally harm him. Those claims, against three currently listed condo board members and three others, were dismissed by a judge this past August as “frivolous and/or vexatious.”

Among other things in the suit, Villi alleged that the defendants had committed “ ‘Acts of Crime and Criminality’ from 2010 onwards” and that the electrical room below his unit was improperly constructed and electromagnetic waves had caused him pain and suffering over several years. Villi believed the board was acting on behalf of the “powerful developer” who built the condo complex.

He alleged the defendants were “deliberately causing harm, stress physically, mentally, financially, confusion inability to rest and sleep for over 5 years, torment, torture that cannot be explain (sic) in words.”

Villi’s claim offered “a complete absence of material facts pleaded in support of any of the claims raised,” the judge found, ordering him to pay $2,500 in legal costs.

In October 2019, a judge ordered Villi “to refrain from recording board members, management, residents, or employees of the Corporation, to refrain from making social media posts about the proceedings and to only communicate with the Corporation in writing, except in an emergency.” He was found in contempt of the orders in September 2021 for communicating with corporation staff and he was ordered to pay $29,500 to the condo.

Villi was scheduled to appear in a Newmarket court Monday as part of ongoing litigation.

The defendants were asking the judge to expand the previous judge’s order about communicating with or filming board members, employees and residents and, in addition, were seeking “an order directing the plaintiff to move out of his unit in the condominium and remove all of his personal belongings from the condominium’s premises within 30 days of this order until the main proceeding is concluded or disposed of.”

Though Villi originally complied with the 2019 order, he began breaching it again in April 2022, court documents say.

“The Plaintiff has now also started harassing residents by swearing at them and taking photographs of them without their permission,” states the notice of motion, dated Aug. 23, 2022.

“The Plaintiff has intentionally failed to comply with the Order. The condominium and its legal counsel have asked the plaintiff to comply with the Order on numerous occasions but the breaches have continued.”

It went on to say expanding the order was necessary “due to Mr. Villi’s new problematic behaviour.”

“As a result of the Plaintiff’s disruptive behaviour, the condominium is at risk of losing valuable employees. The Plaintiff is creating a hostile work environment which the condominium cannot continue to permit. The Plaintiff’s behaviour and breaches of the Order are preventing the Condominium from managing its affairs.”

But shortly after the registrar opened the zoom proceeding Monday, Superior Court Justice Mary Vallee indicated the case would not be going ahead.

Megan Mackey, the lawyer representing the condo board, told the Zoom proceeding the motion wasn’t proceeding and it would be stayed.

“I’m told Mr. Villi was shot and killed last night,” she said.

Residents of the condo also had ongoing concerns about their neighbour, who purchased his first-floor unit in 2014.

Cutrone, the current board member, said he became part of the board in part because his mother -- for whom he owns a unit -- had been bullied by Villi in the past.

Recalling his and his mother’s experiences with Villi, Cutrone, who works as a real estate agent, described him as “ill” and said he had offered to find him a place at a care home.

Resident John Santoro said he had been on the condo board for about a year, five years ago and remembered Villi’s complaints, including about the electrical system.

Speaking to reporters outside the building, Santoro described Villi as “not a monster,” and said he thought he needed “professional help.”

“I commented to my wife several times it’s going to end very badly,” Santoro said.

On Sunday, he said he “heard a commotion in the corridor” and opened his door to officers with “rifles right outside my door in the elevator lobby.”

A tactical unit came in later around 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. to clear the building, he said.

(Neither Santoro nor Cutrone are listed in Villi’s most recent lawsuit.)

MacSween called the shooting “horrific” and named Villi as the shooter. He provided few details about the victims, saying the office of the chief coroner was not yet ready to release their identities.

In a statement briefly posted online Monday, the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 113 Toronto, said Doreen DiNino, wife of union president and condo board member John DiNino, is a surviving victim of the mass shooting.

“We are grateful to learn that she has survived this horrific incident and is undergoing emergency surgery today,” the union wrote, before later deleting the statement.

A 24-year-veteran of York region police is now the subject of a Special Investigations Unit probe after they shot and killed Villi on the third floor of the building. That officer “very likely saved lives by his actions last night,” said the chief, not identifying the officer. The police watchdog investigates all cases of serious harm and death involving police.