Mentally ill man with history of stabbings guilty of murder

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On the last day of June 2023, Maxim Karyakin was simply walking near Cedarbrae Mall when a stranger suddenly plunged a knife into his heart.

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The beloved 30-year-old died 40 minutes later in a hospital. Two days later, Toronto Police arrested Davy Balan, a divorced father of three who suffers from schizophrenia and more shockingly had been found not criminally responsible twice before for stabbing three random strangers who luckily survived.

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Balan, 58, tried again to plead NCR but in a ruling delivered Wednesday, Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly found he was not only criminally responsible for the fatal stabbing, but it was a planned and deliberate murder.

“I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Balan planned to kill a stranger that day by stabbing them. He deliberated on that plan. He carried out his plan by stabbing and killing Mr. Karyakin, a stranger to him,” Kelly said in finding him guilty of first-degree murder.

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Balan, who was being treated with anti-psychotic medication for schizophrenia, was under the supervision of nurses from the Canadian Mental Health Association stepped care team since 2018. Court heard he’d recently quit his job at the LCBO, but was otherwise stable. The nurses made a home visit just two days before the murder and reported he seemed to be his “normal self” with only mild symptoms of his mental illness.

“Other than the senseless killing of Mr. Karyakin, Mr. Balan exhibited no bizarre behaviour immediately before, during or after the killing,” Kelly said.

“There is no evidence that Mr. Balan was preoccupied by any auditory hallucinations or delusions. It appears that Mr. Balan had a plan. He equipped himself with the tools to execute the plan. He brought a knife with him into the vehicle and a change of clothes.”

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According to the agreed statement, Balan drove from his Tuxedo Crt. apartment at 11:46 a.m. that June day and parked at Cedarbrae Mall. He loitered under a tree near the intersection and appeared to be approaching one victim until the man changed direction. Two minutes later, Balan targeted Karyakin, who was walking along Crusader St., and without warning stabbed the poor man once in the heart “with force.”

Balan then jogged back to his car and headed home, according to the statement, discarding the blood-stained kitchen knife, his Pink Floyd shirt, plaid pyjamas pants, Adidas slides and fedora along the way.

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Court heard Balan has done this before.

In April 2000, he was in a car with his six-year-old son on James St. when he got out and began stabbing a stranger who’d just exited a taxi. The man was able to break free and collapsed nearby. Balan drove away, but then stopped to attack a woman walking home from work, stabbing her in the upper body, arms and head.

Found not criminally responsible on two counts of attempted murder due to a mental illness, Balan was given an absolute discharge by the Ontario Review Board four years later.

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But just two years later, Balan struck again. Court heard he was parked at a Tim Hortons on Midland Ave. when he got out of his vehicle and stabbed a customer in the chest before driving away. Once again, he was found NCR. Once again, he was given an absolute discharge in 2012.

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He was stable for 11 years. A month before he killed Karyakin, he had travelled for three weeks to the Philippines to visit his girlfriend. Asked by psychiatrists what was happening that day that led to the horrifying attack, he was evasive and wouldn’t answer their questions.

Did Balan believe he could get away with stabbing a stranger for the third time? Not this time.

“While I have concluded Mr. Balan was suffering from a mental illness at the time of the stabbing, I am not satisfied on a balance of probabilities that he was incapable of knowing his act was morally wrong,” the judge concluded.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for the fall.

mmandel@postmedia.com

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