An 80-year-old arrested for causing a disturbance at his Toronto Community Housing Complex last month was disfigured in a gruesome attack at a Toronto jail, prompting critics to call for better mental health care in the province’s correctional facilities.
Luther Pippy was known to shout insults and sleep in the stairways of the supportive housing for seniors facility in northern Etobicoke, neighbours said, and while he may have needed intervention, he didn’t deserve an attack like that.
“It’s terrible,” said Gordon McNaughton, who lived in the same building. “He would get obnoxious. He swears at people and stuff, you know, but it doesn’t last. He just blurts it out, and that’s it.”
Court documents show Pippy was arrested in 2025 and charged with uttering threats against a neighbour. He was also charged on Feb. 6 with having a 30-inch-long, two-by-two piece of wood for a dangerous purpose in a public place and with damaging TCHC property.
Pippy was placed in a cell in the special needs wing at the Toronto South Detention Centre with a 50-year-old cellmate named Douglats Destruzions-Dumesnils, who had his own history of causing disturbances.
On April 12, a charge document says Destruzions-Dumesnils did “maim, disfigure, and/or endanger the life of the said Luther Pippy and thereby commit an aggravated assault.”
One source says Pippy was blinded in the attack and he’s recovering in a hospital.
Pippy’s charges were dropped.
Destruzions-Dumesnils had a bail hearing at the Ontario Court of Justice in Toronto on Tuesday. It didn’t last long, as the accused didn’t seem to be able to say his own name. For now, he’ll stay in a secure facility at a psychiatric hospital.
Province needs to do better: MPP
Ontario NDP justice critic Kristyn Wong-Tam said the province’s prisons need to do a better job making sure there are protections for the severely mentally ill.
“Obviously, this is extremely disturbing,” Wong-Tam said.
She pointed to the case of Soleiman Faqiri, who died while in the throes of a mental health crisis at the Central East Correctional Centre in 2016.
Surveillance video played at the coroner’s inquest into Faqiri’s death shows guards rushing to his cell to restrain him before he died.
Among the inquest’s recommendations are that the government should take steps to ensure that any person in custody experiencing an acute mental health crisis is admitted to a hospital for assessment.
That doesn’t appear to have happened here, said Wong-Tam.
“That was the top-line recommendation from the coroner’s inquest. And this government has still not acted on that recommendation,” they said.
Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General told CTV News that it’s investigating the attack.
Minister Michael Kerzner announced a plan to dramatically increase prison beds last week saying there are consistently 11,000 inmates housed in Ontario’s facilities and 45,000 in the community.
There are just 10,585 beds, which would go up to 13,153 if the planned projects are implemented.
