Toronto Woman Is Accused of Murdering 3 in Serial Killings

The woman’s victims, found in a span of three days in Canada last week, included two men whom the police said she had attacked at random.

The first victim was a woman whose body was found with visible trauma in a home in Toronto last Tuesday. On Wednesday, the police found a man dying of unspecified injuries in a Niagara Falls park, about 80 miles away. On Thursday, another man was fatally stabbed in a parking lot in Hamilton, a city some 45 miles from there.

That same day, the police in Canada arrested Sabrina Kauldhar, a 30-year-old Toronto woman who the authorities say had killed all three of those people in rapid succession. The motive for the killings was unclear, they said, noting that the last two victims had been targeted at random.

At a briefing with reporters on Friday, Chief Bill Fordy of the Niagara Regional Police Service described the attacks as having taken place on “a tight time frame.” He said that the authorities had undertaken an extensive search for the suspect, believing that the attacker might target others.

There was a risk she would commit further offenses, Chief Fordy said at the news conference. “I think by definition, she is a serial killer.”

The police connected Ms. Kauldhar to the two men’s deaths through a physical description, the authorities said in a news release. She was then linked to the victim in Toronto, a woman in her 60s.

On Friday, she was charged with murder in the three deaths. If convicted, she could face life sentences. The death penalty has been abolished in Canada.

The killing spree began on Tuesday, Oct. 1, according to the Niagara Falls Regional Police Service, when police in Toronto discovered the body of the woman in her 60s, later identified in court documents as Trinh Thi Vu, at a home in the Canadian city’s West Bend neighborhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, in Niagara Falls, Ontario, a casino chef was out walking his dogs when he was attacked in John N. Allan Park, according to the police, who declined to say what kind of weapon was used. The victim, Lance Cunningham, 47, died there of his injuries. He was remembered by his wife as an outdoorsman and a loving father to their 13-year-old daughter.

On Thursday, police were called after a man was stabbed in broad daylight in a parking lot in the port city of Hamilton, northwest of Niagara Falls, also in Ontario. The man, Mario Bilich, 77, was taken to a hospital, where he died, the police said. A retired teacher at a Catholic high school and a widower, he had been leaving an Italian social club, where he often spent his days, when he was attacked, according to local news reports.

A neighbor’s security footage showed a woman following Mr. Bilich that afternoon. “Once I started looking through the footage, I began to realize it was a targeted attack on a totally defenseless, harmless elderly man,” said the neighbor, Daniel Myles, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Ms. Kauldhar was arrested that night in a hotel in the nearby city of Burlington, Ontario.

In the attacks on the two men, the suspect’s description matched, the police said on Friday. Photographs they distributed showed a large woman of short stature wearing a head wrap and baggy clothes.

The police did not make clear how investigators had linked the men’s killings to the death of the woman in Toronto.

They said Ms. Kauldhar knew her first victim, the woman identified in court documents obtained by CBC Toronto as Ms. Vu. The Toronto Police Service declined to disclose the relationship between the two women on Tuesday or to comment further on the case, saying that it was now before the courts.

Relatives of Ms. Kauldhar’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday, and it was not clear if she had obtained or been appointed a lawyer.

News outlets in Canada said that over the past decade, Ms. Kauldhar had been convicted in a number of cities on charges including assault, assaulting an officer, breaking and entering, unauthorized possession of a weapon, carrying a concealed weapon and impaired driving, according to the records.

A former classmate told The Toronto Sun that Ms. Kauldhar had been a good student. She had gotten A’s in school and played sports, including hockey and figure skating. The classmate said that she had started to go “down the wrong path” while in college.

Ms. Kauldhar’s mother, Karen Sagle, who died in 2020, had practiced dentistry for more than two decades alongside her husband, Avtar Kauldhar, in Innisfil, an Ontario town about 45 miles north of Toronto, according to an online obituary.

The police believe that Ms. Kauldhar used taxis and other public transportation to get around during the killing spree and are asking anyone who thinks they may have seen her to come forward. The police also found a delivery driver who purchased clothing that was found with Ms. Kauldhar when she was detained, and the driver is collaborating with the police in their investigation, a spokeswoman for the Niagara Regional Police service said.

“This is a horrific series of incidents that have left our community shaken and in mourning,” Chief Fordy said in a statement on Tuesday. Chief Fordy said that detectives were trying to put together the timeline of Ms. Kauldhar’s movements last week as they investigate the motivation behind what he described as her “acts of violence.”

Alain Delaquérière contributed research.