Man found not criminally responsible after beating parents to death at Scarborough home

Warning: This story contains graphic details.

A Toronto man has been found not criminally responsible (NCR) for killing his parents after brutally beating them to death with a golf club inside their Scarborough home in 2021.

In a judgement issued Monday, Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy found that Kyle Sequeira, 29, was suffering from untreated schizophrenia when he caved in his 65-year-old mother's face and stabbed his 68-year-old father with a broken golf club dozens of times, leaving their bedroom drenched in blood.

"What Mr. Sequeira did to his mother and father was such a grossly disproportionate reaction to his anger that it is almost impossible to ascribe it to a rational mind," Molloy wrote. "This goes far beyond not being in his right mind. 

"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 did, however, find Sequeira guilty of repeatedly stabbing a friend of his in 2019, saying the circumstances around those two offences were different.

It was on June 24, 2019 that Sequeira stabbed his friend Christopher Smith 13 times, wounding several areas of his body after the two had been out at a bar, according to the decision. He was later arrested and released on bail to live at home with his parents, Francis and Lynette Sequeira.

Then in August of 2021, Sequeira's mother called Toronto police, asking them to remove a female friend of her son's from their home as the two had been arguing. Sequeira got into an altercation with the responding officers, according to court documents, and he was subsequently hit with assault charges.

The trial for the charges linked to the initial attack on Smith was slated to start after Labour Day weekend in 2021 — but at some point that weekend, Sequeira entered his parents' bedroom, flicked on the light and beat them both to death.

His mother's face was "pulverized and grossly disfigured," according to court documents, while his father had been stabbed so many times with the broken golf club that it was impossible to say just how many times he had been impaled. 

Molloy said in her decision that Sequeira was mentally ill at the time of both attacks — at issue was his "level of intent.

"Ultimately, I have concluded that Mr. Sequeira was NCR at the time he killed his parents," she wrote. "While I suspect the same may be true with respect to his attack on Mr. Smith, I am not able to reach the conclusion that he was NCR for that offence on a balance of probabilities."