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'As victims, we don't have any rights': Killer released to Toronto neighbourhood often visited by victim's family
Zilla Parker fears running into her husband’s killer, who was recently released to live in a Toronto neighbourhood that she normally frequents.
She described the anxiety created by the possibility she could walk out the door and run into the mentally ill man who killed her husband, Dominic Parker.
“Dominic’s death wasn’t by a car accident it was a brutal knife attack that haunts me still,” she said.
Nabil Huruy was charged with second-degree murder for the unprovoked killing of the Markham firefighter who was off duty at a Danforth Avenue café in 2013. But Huruy — who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and cannabis use disorder (in remission, in a controlled setting) — was found not criminally responsible in December 2015 on account of a mental disorder.
Even though he “continues to represent a significant threat to the safety of the public” a recent decision from the Ontario Review Board (ORB) indicates the 35-year-old moved last December from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) to a supervised residential facility on Dowling Avenue.
“I have a very close friend and one of Dominic’s childhood friends who lives on Dowling and has a place, like, we’re talking a block and a half up, and I’m normally there a lot,” Zilla Parker said Monday.
But since learning late last year that Huruy now lives on Dowling, Parker and her family have avoided the area. “We’ve been hiding from there.”
Parker said she’s reached out to CAMH about Huruy’s placement. She wants him to move elsewhere.
“Nobody ever gets back to me,” she said.
“As victims, we don’t have any rights.”
The hospital “should do their due diligence,” before releasing people like Huruy into the community, she said.
“They should think about everybody’s mental health, and they should place him closer to his mother and away from the victims. They should have done that in the first place. But they don’t seem to have any empathy.”
She knows Huruy’s mental health issues led to her husband’s killing.
“He should be healing,” Parker said.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
But she wants him to do it someplace else.
Anne-Marie Tremble, who speaks for CAMH, said in an email that the hospital was unable to accommodate an interview request on the matter.
Parker wrote a victim impact statement to the ORB stressing that she’s normally on Dowling on a daily basis.
“Now I can’t walk there because I may be standing on the same street corner (as Huruy) and I have anxiety,” she said.
“This was a brutal, brutal attack and it changed our lives forever.”
The ORB heard that Huruy entered a café in Toronto on Sept. 14, 2013, “where the victim was seated with other patrons. After briefly sitting near the victim, Mr. Huruy suddenly produced a knife and stabbed the victim in the head, and, when pulled away, used a second knife to stab the victim in the face. The victim was transported to hospital, where he remained in critical condition until succumbing to his injuries.”
One of Parker’s daughters, 30, who works in design-build, had to turn down a project recently on Dowling because she didn’t want to be on the same street as her father’s killer, said her mother. “She cancelled the whole project and said ‘I can’t take this project. I can’t work here because I can’t be on this street every day.’”
Parker’s other daughter, 31, who moved to New Zealand for years after the killing, has returned to Ontario, but didn’t know Huruy was out of hospital until National Post published a story recently about his case.
Her mom had to call her in Peterborough to explain the situation.
“I was shaking,” Parker said.
“We have protected her and she has tried to not know anything because it was just too traumatizing for her.”
Huruy was born in Saudi Arabia and immigrated to Canada at age 12 with his mother and sister.
He’s now living about 1.7 kilometres from CAMH and “travels to programs by walking or public transit,” said his recent ORB decision.
That takes him past “one of the biggest areas filled with cannabis shops,” Parker said.
His psychiatrist testified this spring that he saw a “gradual but meaningful expansion in Mr. Huruy’s insight over the past year. While insight is not yet fulsome, Mr. Huruy increasingly links his index offence (of killing Parker) to psychosis and substance use, particularly cannabis.”
His psychiatrist said Huruy “has not exhibited active psychotic, manic, or residual psychotic symptoms over the past year. Previously noted religiously themed delusions have not emerged,” according to a May 12 decision from the ORB.
But in its April 2025 report on Huruy, the independent tribunal that regularly reviews the status of individuals found not criminally responsible due to mental disorder, noted that there had been a problem when Huruy was initially confined to the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care, in Penetanguishene — Ontario’s most secure forensic facility.
“In September of 2016, while at Waypoint, Mr. Huruy began to express homicidal ideation related to extremist radical Islamic views,” the ORB said last spring.
“He stated that he would return to Waypoint after his discharge for the purpose of carrying out an attack on staff and co-patients.”
A forensic psychiatrist with the Criminal Behaviour Analysis Section of the Ontario Provincial Police, conducted assessments of Huruy in 2017, 2020 and 2022 “in relation to his extremist beliefs,” it said.
That psychiatrist “concluded that Mr. Huruy posed a high risk of violence in light of these views and his diagnoses of schizophrenia. He suggested that Mr. Huruy meet with an Imam on a regular basis to potentially influence Mr. Huruy regarding the normal, non-radicalized form of Islam.”
In 2022, Huruy “reported a change in his interpretation of his Islamic faith, after speaking with an aunt in Saudi Arabia, and no longer espoused his extremist homicidal ideations,” said his ORB decision from last year.
“Mr. Huruy was subsequently transferred to CAMH to be closer to his mother, and he has maintained that he had misinterpreted the Quran and no longer has religious delusional beliefs or extremist homicidal ideations.”
At this year’s ORB hearing, a lawyer for the province raised the issue about the late Dominic Parker’s friends and family members, who frequent the area where Huruy’s now living.
“Counsel for the Attorney General accepted that the victims’ concerns are genuine, arising from geographic proximity rather than any concern about Mr. Huruy’s conduct or intent. He characterized the issue as systemic, noting that the proximity concern emerged late in the discharge process and that post placement police notification offered limited reassurance,” the decision said.
The ORB acknowledged that Huruy has made a lot of progress in the last year, and “has remained free of active psychotic symptoms, has complied with treatment, and has behaved appropriately in both hospital and community settings. The board accepts the evidence that this progress reflects meaningful rehabilitation.”
But it noted Parker’s killing “occurred in the context of untreated psychosis and substance use, and the risk associated with relapse remains a central consideration in the board’s analysis. The gravity of the index offence heightens the consequences should decompensation occur, even if the likelihood of such an event is presently reduced.”
Zilla Parker has a tough time attending the ORB’s annual reviews of Huruy’s case.
“You’ve got these doctors and psychiatrists who are saying he’s a great guy.”
They’re taking Huruy’s mental health into account, Parker said. “But what about the rest of the community?”
Parker is circulating a petition to get Huruy transferred to another facility.
“I am now appealing to everyone, all my friends, all Dominic’s friends, and all our friends of friends to support me in my ask to CAMH to have Nabil Huruy moved,” she wrote in a plea for support. “As most of you don’t know he is now out and in the community and they placed him in a home a block from where I often am and one of (Dominic’s) childhood friends lives.”
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