MBA graduate arrested four days after randomly stabbing a stranger in a Toronto drugstore

On Tuesday afternoon, Toronto police arrested Rohinie Bisesar, an MBA and financial district regular, and charged her with attempted murder. Police believe Bisesar walked into a downtown drugstore Friday afternoon and hacked a knife into a stranger’s chest, wounding her grievously. Then she walked away.

Bisesar’s story made international news when police released her name Monday. She appeared online to be as far from a common criminal as could be. She went to one of Canada’s best business schools, at York University. She worked in finance and consulting. Her LinkedIn page featured a slew of glowing praise from former colleagues.

But according to one friend, the life Bisesar lived online was largely a mirage, at least in recent years. Karl Gutowski has known Bisesar for eight years. He said Tuesday she struggled to find work after completing her MBA in 2007. Bisesar, 40, networked hard, he said, but could never land anything for more than a few months at a time.

And in the past several years, Gutowski said, Bisesar’s mental health had deteriorated. She was hospitalized in 2014. She was alienated from her family and she appeared to be increasingly paranoid.

“She’s a sweet person,” Gutowski said. But lately, “she seemed very sweet but odd.”

Police say Bisesar was arrested Tuesday at approximately 3:05 p.m. Ten minutes earlier, someone using Bisesar’s personal email address sent a message to the National Post.

Gutowski’s confirmed that the email address is authentic and that Bisesar had been using it Tuesday. But the Post could not independently confirm that the message came from her.
The email opens with a plea:

“Do you know any top professionals in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, satellites?” it said. “Maybe Military. Maybe Government?

“Something has been happening to me and this is not my normal self and I would like to know who and why this is happening. There is either a single person or more responsible and who and why would be nice to know.”

“I am sorry about the incidence,” the email said. “I felt the need to be extreme to see if it would work. I would normally not do such a thing.”

Gutowski said Bisesar’s successful friends helped her through years of unemployment, letting her sleep on their couches or lending her money.

“She’s been able to sustain herself from a large network of friends,” he said. “I speculate the list got shorter and shorter.”

Her only real break came in 2010 when she landed a job at GMP Capital, a financial services firm with an office on King Street West, he said. But her employment there only lasted about eight months.

“She got that one job, but she didn’t get to keep it for too long,” Gutowski said. “She couldn’t adjust to pretty normal office politics.”

Friday’s stabbing happened in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, at a Shopper’s Drug Mart in the underground PATH system. The victim, who hasn’t been identified, suffered life-threatening injuries.

Police charged Bisesar Tuesday with attempted murder, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon. She was due to appear in court Wednesday morning.

News of the apparently random attack rippled through the tight financial district this week. Bisesar was well known in several coffee shops in the area. And until about a month ago, she was a regular at a Starbucks on Yonge and Adelaide streets, according to the manager, Ryan Baron.

Baron said Bisesar sat for months most days at a window bench near the bathroom. He didn’t find anything unusual about her. She was quiet, polite. But about a month ago, she just stopped showing up.

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