Random, unprovoked stabbings in Ontario city rekindle outsized public fear of stranger attacks

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Peel police issued its second public safety warning within two weeks for random stabbings in Mississauga, continuing a growing list of similar attacks by strangers in the Toronto area.

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Each of these attacks is terrifying. Cumulatively, even more so.

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Random, stranger attacks are among the most frightening forms of criminal victimization, but they terrify us more than they should.

In the latest reported attack, on Tuesday afternoon, a man approached a 19-year-old male from behind and stabbed him before running away, police said. On Dec. 30, around the same time, also in Mississauga, a man repeatedly stabbed someone riding a city bus before jumping out.

The victims were significantly injured but survived.

Both attacks were described by police as stranger stabbings. After the first, Peel Regional Police asked the public “to be extra vigilant and report any suspicious behaviour.” Officers described the second as “an unprovoked attack. The suspect is considered armed and dangerous.”

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The year closed with a string of similar unprovoked attacks in Toronto, including stabbings and assaults on Toronto’s bustling transit system. In December, Vanessa Kurpiewska, 31, of Toronto, died after being stabbed in an unprovoked attack on a subway train.

“Stranger incidents are much more likely to strike fear into the population and to increase anxiety about crime, particularly as we move through public spaces,” said Scot Wortley, professor at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.

Most people have some control over who they spend time with privately, seen as risk mitigation, but when they are out in public, that evaporates.

“So, anything unpredictable, anything we can’t control, creates more anxiety,” Wortley said.

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The outsized fear doesn’t match risk, however.

“The good news is that when you look at the nature of interpersonal violence in statistics year after year, all the data strongly indicates that stranger violence is quite rare — when looking at homicide statistics, aggravated assault statistics, sexual assault statistics.

“The bad news is we may have more to fear from people we’re familiar with. It is much more likely to involve friends, family member, or an acquaintance than a stranger.”

Inter-family attacks are met with sadness, sympathy and outrage, but often not with fear. People can often distance themselves from the situation.

“People will dismiss it as a dysfunctional family or specific situation — ‘I won’t find myself in that situation.’ Whereas a shooting at the mall or a stabbing at the subway station, we could all relate to the fact,” said Wortley.

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That a stranger attack is indiscriminate and unpredictable, hitting people doing their normal, daily routines, undermines everything about our sense of personal safety.

It erases being cautious, inconspicuous, avoiding dangerous lifestyles, choosing good company, locking doors, living in a good area.

Living in large city is a “startling paradox,” Charles Silberman wrote in a landmark treatise on crime in 1978, because citizens live surrounded by strangers yet “fear strangers more than anything else.”

It hasn’t changed in the decades since.

The public fear of crime, however, outpaces reality.

When it comes to murder, 8.4 per cent of women and 18.4 per cent of men were killed by a stranger in 2021, about the same as the average over the previous 10 years. But that doesn’t narrow further into that distinct subcategory of random, irrational, unprovoked attacks.

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A variety store clerk shot by a robber was killed by a stranger, and a man beaten in a sudden barroom dispute could be too, but those aren’t the same societal fears as unprovoked, random attacks.

Statistics, however, do little to calm nerves. How can they when we keep hearing of these things?

Because stranger attacks are alarming, alarm bells get rung. People speak out, media is attracted, and police and politicians respond.

“In Canada, random stranger violence is still relatively rare so reports of attacks like this and attacks on the TTC still garner a lot of attention,” said Wortley.

“Not to dismiss them, they are horrible events, they are tragic and traumatic, but they grab our attention and generate anxiety and fear.”

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The fear over stranger attacks is not confined to the Toronto area. In British Columbia, the province ordered a study after a wave of similar random attacks in Vancouver.

Flammable liquid was poured on a woman and set on fire as she sat near a park, another was hit with a brick while shielding her child in a stroller. Other women were variously smacked in the head with a butcher’s knife, hit by bear spray, and chased.

A man with a machete attacked four people in a rooming house in one incident. In others, a man was stabbed to death, others beaten, and a man in a wheelchair stabbed on the street.

The B.C. report connected much of Vancouver’s mayhem to mental health, addictions and repeat offenders.

That may be the case in the Toronto area as well.

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Peel police made an arrest Wednesday in the most recent stranger stabbing, charging a man who was on judicial release for several previous charges, including assault, assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm and uttering threats.

At least one charge was from a previous stabbing. He was legally prohibited from carrying weapons.

The Canadian Mental Health Association says linking violence to mental health is often misapplied, that it isn’t a straight line between them.

“Mental illnesses are not a good predictor of violence,” the association said.

“If we look at mental illnesses on their own, people who experience a mental illness are no more violent than people without a mental illness. Excluding people from communities is linked to violence. And people with mental illnesses are often among those who are excluded.”

The association said someone with mental illness is far more likely to be a victim of violence than to be the perpetrator.

Wortley characterized the publics fear of random, stranger attacks to buying lottery tickets.

“The chances of winning the lottery are extremely low but we still play it. The chance of us being the victim of an unprovoked stranger crime is extremely low, but it could happen, and that generates a great deal of anxiety and we want to be protected.”

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys