A memorial at a west-end Toronto subway station is serving as a stark reminder of the latest violent incident to take place on the TTC which left a woman dead last week.
Vanessa Kurpiewska, 31, died in hospital after she was stabbed by a man she did not know at High Park Station shortly after 2 p.m. on Dec. 8.
She was one of two victims in the random attack that day. The other, a 37-year-old woman, was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital.
Flowers and messages of condolence addressed to “Nessa” now occupy the space by the tracks that became a crime scene less than a week earlier.
“My life has grown richer by knowing you, my heart is already missing you and my smile is brighter remembering you,” one message reads. “We love you,” and “If I had my life to live over again, I’d find you sooner my friend,” read others.
A suspect was taken into custody at the scene following the incident and charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder. Police said the attacker did not know his victims.
In a GoFundMe campaign established in the wake of Kurpiewska’s death, she’s remembered as a “very independent” woman who loved fashion, concerts, and meeting new people.
Her death marks the third to take place on TTC property this year alone.
In June, a 28-year-old woman died in hospital after she was doused with a flammable substance and set on fire on a bus outside Kipling Station. Two months before that, a 21-year-old international student was shot outside of the entrance to Sherbourne Station and transported to hospital, where he later died.
Moreover, there’s been a number of other random attacks reported across the network in 2022, including separate incidents where a passenger was choked unconscious and robbed at Pioneer Village Station, another was stabbed in the neck at St George Station, and a woman was pushed onto the tracks while waiting for a subway train at Bloor-Yonge Station.
In the last case, the passenger sued the TTC for negligence following the April incident. In response, the TTC said at the time that the passenger was standing too close to the tracks and shouldn’t have been travelling alone on public transit “when she knew or ought to have known that it was unsafe for her to do so.”
All those incidents, and others, prompted an increase in police visibility on the network in recent months which Mayor John Tory said remains to this day.
“We've already taken measures in the past and even in the current circumstances to increase the presence of different kinds of people; special constables, streets to homes outreach workers, police officers on the system, and that kind of work will continue,” Tory said at a news conference on Friday.
The random violence is not limited to passengers.
Last Monday, a TTC employee was assaulted and robbed by a masked male while on duty at the Long Branch Loop in Etobicoke in broad daylight, according to Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 113, one of the unions that represents frontline TTC workers.
At the time, ATU Local 113 said the attack was the second on a TTC worker in less than a week and called on the commission “to do more to prevent all forms of violence towards transit workers.”
To that end, Tory said the city is currently in discussions about including additional resources in next year’s budget to further enhance the aforementioned presence on the network and added that more needs to be done to address mental health and the “state of the law”—two factors he believes will help improve the “broader issue of violence” in the city.
Tory said he planned to sit down with Toronto Police Chief James Ramer and TTC CEO Rick Leary this week to discuss those options further.
