The man charged in last week’s North York shooting is a former police officer and York University executive
The incident marked the city’s seventh homicide of the year
CBC has confirmed that a 67-year-old man charged with second-degree murder in Toronto last week is a former Collingwood police officer, and a former York University executive. (The Collingwood Police Service is now defunct, following an Ontario Provincial Police amalgamation in the late 90s.)
The shooting marked the city’s seventh homicide of the year.
After the April 30 shooting at Wenderly Park in North York, police arrested Michaelo Markicevic. An OPP spokesperson told CBC, “It is believed the person in question resigned from Collingwood Police Service in 1995/1996, and therefore did not transfer over to the OPP when they amalgamated in 1997/1998.”
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CBC’s investigation found that Markicevic was charged repeatedly with assault while employed by the Collingwood Police Service, including charges of uttering threats to and assaulting his mother. (His mother failed to appear in court, and the charges were dropped.)
CBC News also found that Markicevic was employed as York University’s assistant vice-president of campus service and business operations in the early 2000s.
York sued Markicevic for defrauding the university, in several schemes resulting in over a million dollars in damages. York won that case, and the judge’s decision said, “Over the period from 2007 to 2010, Mr. Markicevic held a senior and trusted position at York. He abused that trust for his own personal gain. He masterminded two fraudulent schemes, which he implemented through his subordinates.”
The victim has been identified as 47-year-old Daniel Stopnicki, a member of the game development program advisory committee at Sheridan College.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
