23-year-old man arrested after random stabbing at Toronto subway station

Toronto police have arrested a man who they believe is responsible for stabbing another man in a random attack at St. George Station Tuesday night.

Police announced Wednesday evening the arrest of 23-year-old Danta Easterbrook of Toronto.

He has been charged with assault with a weapon.

"We do like to thank the TTC for their assistance in getting us the surveillance images that greatly helped our investigators when we're trying to locate a suspect," said Toronto police spokesperson Const. Laura Brabant.

"We got that image out to members of the public, which was really great. And we just want to thank everybody who provided tips and information in this investigation that helped lead us to an arrest and in a good, timely manner."

The stabbing, which police believe was unprovoked, sent a 30-year-old man to the hospital. The victim, Mario Greco, was later released after it was determined that he only sustained a flesh wound in the attack.

Greco spoke to CP24 Wednesday afternoon, recounting what happened at the TTC station. He said he only had a brief interaction with his assailant and still has no idea what might have motivated the attack.

He recalled that he was seated on a bench on the platform with a woman he had just gone on a first date with at around 11:20 p.m.

Greco said they were preparing to part ways and get onto trains heading in opposite directions when a man sat beside them and asked the woman where she was going.

His date, Greco said, essentially told the man that it was none of his business. But in an attempt to "diffuse the strange request" and be "nice," he said that he decided to ask the man where he was going, which led to an extremely brief conversation.

"He started to get up and left randomly and I said, you know, 'best of luck' and resumed the conversation with my date," Greco recalled. "Five minutes later, randomly, I felt something on my neck out of nowhere."

The stabbing at St. George Station is just the latest random attack on the city's subway system in recent days, following a separate incident in which a woman was pushed onto the tracks at Bloor-Yonge Station on Sunday.

A 45-year-old Toronto woman was charged with attempted murder in that incident.

A third incident, occurring eight days ago at Pioneer Village Station, involved a suspect choking a man unconscious and robbing him.

Speaking with CP24 on Wednesday afternoon, Greco said that he didn't immediately grasp the gravity of the situation after the stabbing, at first not even realizing what happened.

When he did, he said that he immediately went to the "worst-case scenario" and feared that he might die on the platform, doing his best to apply pressure to the wound while he sought out help.

"It gave me the sensation of like a random bee sting or a doctor doing blood work (at first), but I'm like 'OK, I am in a subway station, this a random guy, I have never met him before and he is jabbing something into my neck. Mario, you are being stabbed right now.' It hit me at that point," he said, noting that he did recognize the suspect from their previous interaction.

"I am very lucky. I definitely had God on my side and I wish that other people that, you know, have been in similar situations would have that same blessing, that same shot at life."

On Wednesday, a large white bandage on his neck was the only indicator of what transpired the previous night.

Before the arrest was announced, Greco hoped that police would quickly apprehend the suspect in the stabbing to prevent anyone else from being harmed.

But he said that he doesn't want the random nature of what happened to him to cause people to be overly fearful as they go about their lives.

"We can't let fearful scenarios like what I went through affect other people's lives in the sense where they are living with fear because when you live with fear, it propagates fear," he said." We need to remember the beauty we have in this world and not be deterred by awful circumstances like what happened."

Meanwhile, the TTC says that they will be focusing patrols by special constables and other surveillance resources "in and around the subway system" in light of the recent violent incidents.

"The TTC is safe by any global measurement. We move hundreds of millions of customers every year without incident, but we never take that for granted, which is why we are continually looking at ways to make the system even safer," spokesperson Stuart Green told CP24 earlier on Wednesday. "Some of this is cyclical – we saw a couple of years ago that cases were quite high on the bus network, so we had special constables spend more of their time on the bus network."

Green said that there are 40 to 50 special constables patrolling the system at any given time, and another 56 special constables will be trained and ready to enter service by the end of 2022.