Vaughan shooting: Gunman had long-running feud with condo board

Bbc.com
Dec. 21, 2022
Nadine Yousef

A man who shot and killed his neighbours in a Canada apartment complex was embroiled in a legal dispute with the building's board.

According to court documents, the 73-year-old filed several lawsuits against the board that a judge later described as "frivolous".

The board of the building in Vaughan, Ontario also took him to court in 2018 over alleged threatening behaviour.

Five people were killed and another was injured in the shooting on Sunday.

Police said three of the victims were members of the apartment complex's board, though they have not disclosed a motive.

On Tuesday, police named the victims as Rita Camilleri, 57, Vittorio Panza, 79, Russell Manock, 75, Helen Manock, 71 and Naveed Dada, 59.

Another person, a 66-year-old woman, was injured and taken to hospital. The woman's husband told the Canadian Press that she was expected to survive following emergency surgery.

The alleged gunman, Francesco Villi, was shot and killed by a responding officer in a hallway inside the apartment complex.

He had been due to appear at a court hearing on Monday where the condo corporation was requesting his eviction from the building temporarily.

The board had also asked a judge to find Villi in contempt for violating a previous order not to contact them, according to the Toronto Star newspaper.

Court documents show the building corporation filed a restraining order against the suspect in November 2018, due to his "threatening, abusive, intimidating and harassing behaviour".

Three of the deceased victims - Ms Camilleri, Mr Manock and Mr Dada - are named as defendants in a lawsuit that the suspect filed in 2019 against the condo's board, in which he accuses them of "deliberately causing harm" towards him.

The lawsuit was called "frivolous" and "vexatious" by a judge in July 2022 and dismissed.

Social media accounts under the alleged gunman's name feature several videos - one of which was posted a few hours before the shooting - in which he expressed grievances with the building's board because of an electrical room underneath his apartment.

Police Chief Jim MacSween described a "horrendous scene" when officers arrived at the apartment complex. The five victims, he said, were killed in three separate apartments.