MANDEL: Transit union chief on the random shooting that almost killed his wife

Torontosun.com
April 3, 2023
Michele Mandel

John Di Nino learned too well the horrifying reality of random violence spurred by rage and mental illness.

It came calling at the door of his home just over three months ago, a gunshot that the Amalgamated Transit Union Canada national president believes was meant for him, but instead critically injured his beloved wife Doreen, the lone survivor of a mass shooting that killed five of her neighbours.

“She’s doing OK,” he sighs when asked about her recovery. “She still has multiple surgeries to go. Multiple interventions that need to happen. But we’re taking it one day at a time, right?”

Facing eviction by his condo board, Francesco Villi, 73, armed himself with a semi-automatic handgun on Dec. 18, 2022 and went hunting for those he blamed, shooting six residents -- three of whom were board members -- before he was shot and killed by York Regional Police.

Di Nino, 57, was the volunteer condo board president at the Jane St. and Rutherford Rd. building. “Unequivocally, I was an intended target,” he says. “He pointed at me and for some reason, the gun didn’t go off.”

It was a Sunday night and they had guests for dinner when they heard the fire alarm and what sounded like a small explosion. When they heard banging on the door, he warned his wife not to answer because there could be a fire outside. “Everything’s fine,” she told him after looking through the peephole.

Villi was standing there with a gun suddenly in his hand. “My wife screamed, ‘Oh my God.’ And he fired.”

The bullet hit her in the face -- it went in through her lip and exited the back of her neck. “Just based on how the bullet exited,” Di Nino says, “it was less than a millimetre from being catastrophic.”

As both a victim of violence and a key union leader in the transit world, he has a unique and eloquent perspective as he watches our city consumed by fear as each day seems to bring another headline about a random attack, with the recent shocking stabbing death of teen Gabriel Magalhaes at Keele station still leaving many of us reeling.

“I sit here reflecting on what happened in my personal life and what’s happened with the most recent incidents of violence on transit systems right across the country, most particularly that young 16-year-old who was killed, and then I hear the premier of this province say in a political statement, ‘Don’t vote for a mayor who’s going to defund police, we need increased policing.'”

“Right through this whole transit crisis, I have clearly said policing is a short-term measure. It does not address the long-term causes and root causes of why a lot of this violence is happening.”

Where are our government leaders’ focus on the growing problems of mental illness, homelessness, addiction and financial instability, he demands. With nowhere else to go, more and more are taking refuge in the transit system. And nothing is being done.

Di Nino was at a press conference at Vaughan Metropolitan station recently when he alerted police to a person obviously in some kind of mental health crisis.

“All they did was take that individual and move him along the subway system,” he says. “That’s not getting them help, right?”

Not every person who lives with mental illness or addiction will go on to commit a violent crime, he hastens to add. But for some, it is a dangerous precursor. “What these incidents have shown us over the last number of years and the last number of months, is that each of these assailants had something wrong with them that people knew about and they weren’t treated for. That’s the issue,” he insists.

Di Nino has asked for a national task force to deal with violence and develop a plan to protect transit employees and customers.

“It gets under my skin when I hear transit agencies, mayors and premiers say things like, ‘Our condolences, our thoughts and best wishes go out to all the victims.’ Those are words. We need actions, not just words.”

In Edmonton, there was a 53% increase in violence on their transit system, he says, and a 46% increase on the TTC. “This is a national crisis.”

In his case, Di Nino doesn’t know if the mass killer was ever diagnosed with a mental illness or received any kind of treatment. But all the signs were there.

“We assumed this individual had mental health issues and that’s why we took the measures to protect our community,” he explains. “We were in the courts for a number of years. Our understanding is there were multiple police reports with this individual. There should have been flags raised.”

They’ve been told the police investigation should wrap up in the next couple of weeks but he’s not sure whether they’ll ever get the answers they’re looking for.

In the meantime, Di Nino mourns for the family they used to be.

Vaughan City Councillor Marilyn Iafrate is pictured dropping off bouquets of flowers after the mass shooting on Dec. 18, 2022 at the condo building where John Di Nino lived on Jane St., just north of Rutherford Rd. PHOTO BY SCOTT LAURIE /TORONTO SUN

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about what happened,” he confides. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about all of the victims who innocently lost their lives. Every day, the reality of watching my wife and how she’s going through the rehabilitation stage and has more challenges.”

He pauses, then: “I’ll cut to the chase, the s*** sits in your head,” he finally says. “You relive it every single day.”

Di Nino wonders if it’s the pandemic to blame for all this pent-up rage, incivility and illness that we are now witnessing, a cauldron simmering just below the surface that explodes with no warning.

“You try to figure out why. How bad was it for this individual that he had to resort to that? What were they thinking? How did we survive? You don’t walk the city streets anymore with the same jump in your step, if you know what I mean. You’re constantly looking over your shoulder.”

Just that incident of noticing a man in crisis at Vaughan Metropolitan subway set him back. “It triggers your emotions,” Di Nino tries to explain. “Life will never be the same, from a physical and mental health perspective for my wife, and from a trauma and mental health perspective for my family. Those things are with us for life now.”

And that’s why he feels he can especially relate to these random attacks on the transit system.

“These are things that are catastrophic, that are violent, that are unimaginable, things that one would never expect. It’s not the norm -- although in today’s world, that’s becoming more and more the reality,” Di Nino says.

“No one assumed or could ever have expected what happened on Dec. 18. And nobody ever expected somebody to knock on your door and shoot at you. It was random. For us, it was random. Maybe in that gunman’s mind, it was targeted, but we never walked through our hallways thinking we were going to be assaulted or shot or stabbed.

“Someone knocked at our door and fired.”