An Ontario man who beat his parents to death with a golf club has been found not criminally responsible (NCR) due to a mental disorder.
Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy found Monday that Kyle Sequeira was unable to access the knowledge that what he was doing was morally wrong when he engaged in the frenzied 2021 killing of his parents, Lynette and Francis Sequeira. Sequeira was suffering from untreated schizophrenia at the time.
“What Mr. Sequeira did to his mother and his father was such a grossly disproportionate reaction to his anger that it is almost impossible to ascribe it to a rational mind,” she said.
“This goes far beyond not being in his right mind.”
However, Molloy found Sequeira guilty of an aggravated assault that occurred more than two years before he killed his parents – a case court heard was tied to their deaths.
“The surrounding circumstances were quite different,” she said.
What happened?
Sequeira had been on trial for the double murder of his parents — Lynette and Francis Sequeira — who were killed in 2021 inside their Scarborough home where the family lived. Sequeira admitted that sometime between Sept. 4-5 in 2021, he beat them to death with a golf club.
Court heard that on Sept. 7, 2021, a trial was due to start for Sequeira, who was charged in relation to a knife attack on a friend. At least one of his parents was due to testify as a crown witness at the trial.
Sequeira stabbed a friend 13 times after an outing at a bar in June 2019. The facts state that Sequeira did not say anything before or during the attack.
Dr. Derek Pallandi, a forensic psychiatrist called upon by Sequeira’s defence during the trial, told the court that while Sequeira was intoxicated, to turn around and stab someone 13 times seemed excessive.
Though Molloy found that on a balance of probabilities Sequeira had a mental disorder at the time, she found his own memory of the incident extremely vague, and does not support the NCR thesis for it.
“His memory may well have been impacted both by his mental illness and by the drugs and alcohol he had consumed,” Molloy said Monday.
“However, I am unable to get further than a suspicion that there was more than violence fueled by drunkenness going on here.”
Murders were acts of ‘butchery’: Molloy
Pallandi, who also assessed Sequeira’s criminal responsibility for the homicides, told court that Sequeira’s actions in killing his parents were more clearly linked to auditory command hallucinations.
Dr. Lisa Ramshaw, a forensic psychiatrist, disagreed with Pallandi at the trial, saying Kyle was angry, based on his own self-reporting. Ramshaw said just hours before the 2021 incident, he consumed two airplane-size bottles of alcohol after smoking marijuana. She said the alcohol would have exacerbated his rage.
Just weeks before killing his parents, Lynette called police after Kyle got into an argument with a female friend at the family home. Kyle was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer, among other things.
At the time, Kyle was living under house arrest with his parents as sureties, given the 2019 charges. On the night their bodies were found, Francis’s co-worker went by their house to check on him after he had failed to show up for work.
The colleague spoke with Kyle when he opened the door, and said Francis didn’t live at the house. The co-worker then left and called police.
When police arrived, they determined there were sufficient grounds to enter the home, breached the front door and began a search. They found a locked door in the basement and gave commands for it to be opened, but when no one complied, an officer kicked it open. Kyle was found lying on a bed. He didn’t comply when instructed to leave, but was arrested without incident.
Francis and Lynette’s bodies were found on the third floor. Autopsies revealed Lynette’s cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and face. Francis’s cause of death was determined to be multiple trauma. He had multiple penetrating injuries, including on his genitalia.
Molloy said Monday it was the first time she found someone both criminally and not criminally responsible for two separate crimes.
“While he may have had disagreements with his parents in the past and angry outbursts from time to time, these killings were such acts of butchery that they fall outside the realm of rational thought,” Molloy said.
“Mr. Sequeria’s attack on his friend is a grossly disproportionate use of violence given the relative minor basis for anger. This is a common feature between the 2019 and 2021 incidents. However, the attack on Mr. Smith does not have the same degree of ‘overkill’ as his attack on his parents.”
A sentencing hearing will be scheduled next month. Molloy said mitigating factors include the fact Sequeira is a first-time offender who is young and has mental health issues. She also told Crown and defence that it’s possible Sequeira could be dealing with time served on the aggravated assault conviction.
The 29-year-old has been incarcerated at the Toronto East Detention Centre since his arrest in September 2021.
Defence lawyer Marcus Bornfreund said was pleased with the court’s decision.
“Mr. Sequeira was overwhelming relieved with the decision, noting he looks forward to being transferred to hospital,” Bornfreund said.
The Crown indicated after the verdicts they will be seeking a high-risk offender designation for Sequeira.