Hamilton opens hub dedicated to mental health and community support in memory of Zachary Antidormi
On Tuesday morning, a trim, smartly dressed woman stood to address a group of Hamilton police officers, paramedics, and health care professionals. Three decades ago, the forces represented in the room let her down in the worst way.
Because of failures in policing and gaps in the mental health system, her young son suffered a violent death. And yet Lori Triano-Antidormi was not there to condemn them for what happened then. She had come to thank them for what has happened since. The occasion was the opening of a new hub for those working to prevent similar tragedies.
Zachary Antidormi was just 2½ when he died, a beautiful boy with a mop of fair hair who loved the Beatles, Barney the Dinosaur, and Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. He lived in a modest neighbourhood with his mother, a psychologist, and his father, Tony Antidormi.
He wanted to be a crossing guard when he grew up. To practise, he would guide other children across his quiet dead-end street, a whistle between his lips. His parents made him a handheld red stop sign.
One problem dogged the family's happy life: a nightmare neighbour, Lucia Piovesan, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. She berated Zachary's parents over parking arrangements, shouted threats at them, brandished a crowbar and, in one case, pushed Ms. Triano-Antidormi to the sidewalk while she was carrying her son.
Police were often called but did little. The one time they laid charges, in the pushing incident, a judge dismissed the case, saying the neighbours should settle their disputes "like mature adults, rather than spoiled children."
On March 27, 1997, Zachary was being pulled by a neighbour's daughter in a little wagon when Ms. Piovesan came out of her house, bent over the boy and stabbed him again and again with a knife.
The killing shook the city. It was clear that something had to change.
Ms. Piovesan had a long record of aggressive behaviour. She had threatened the previous residents of the family's house. She had gone to the office of her MPP to say she was going to kill her priest. She had been confined for involuntary treatment of her illness but stopped taking her medications when she was released. Her daughter, who lived with her, tried in vain to get help from doctors, police, and justices of the peace.
Ms. Piovesan came to believe that the soul of her dead son had been reborn inside of Zachary and that killing him would release it. Yet no one flagged her as dangerous. Some of the police officers who turned up on the street did not even know that other police had been there before.
Ms. Piovesan's trial for murder threw a spotlight on these tragic failings. The judge said that despite her obvious illness, those around her "were unable to obtain proper treatment for an obviously sick person." Ms. Piovesan was found not criminally responsible, but confined to a forensic psychiatric unit.
A 1999 inquest delved further into how the system had broken down. Its jury issued 60 recommendations. Among them were calls for more training for police on how to deal with people in mental health crisis and better reporting and information sharing on incidents involving mental illness.
Soon after the murder, police began teaming up with mental health workers. A pioneering outreach group known as COAST (Crisis Outreach and Support Team) would go out on calls with the cops, one of the first such partnerships, now common in Canadian cities.
The collaboration has expanded and deepened over the years. The idea is not just to ensure police respond properly to incidents of potentially dangerous mental health crisis, but to steer mentally ill people - the vast majority of whom pose no danger - toward treatment and other services. The teams do everything from bringing warm socks to people in homeless encampments to consoling the parents of a drowned child. They keep detailed digital records of their contacts and constantly share information about how their clients are doing.
Hamilton still suffers from the same triple plague of homelessness, addiction, and mental illness that has hit other communities. It is visible all around the city's downtown, from the well-known local man sleeping in a squalid pile of belongings beside the thoroughfare entering Hamilton to the frantic guy dodging back and forth, shouting curses, through the rush-hour traffic on a busy street. But the way the system responds is night and day compared with the time of Zachary's killing.
On one visit this Monday, plainclothes officer Ryan Komadowski and outreach worker Yvanna Master went to see an elderly woman who had phoned a crisis line to complain that someone had been trying to break into her apartment and that her neighbours and landlord were conspiring against her. Ms. Master listened with sympathy to her confused, sometimes tearful account and offered to connect her with a respite centre where she might get some rest and help.
That same afternoon, uniformed officer Luke Perro went out in a marked car with worker Keeley Powell, monitoring the dispatch system for crisis calls. The two have worked together off and on since 2016, learning from each other the best ways to talk to disturbed people.
A month ago, the policing and outreach teams moved into their new home in a big, long-vacant building. Emergency officials and mental health workers are all gathered under the same roof, allowing them to consult each other and make decisions together.
The place is called Zachary's Legacy. "Every time we take that call, we remember Zachary. Every time we go out, we remember Zachary," says Jenn Sansalone, who manages the outreach teams for St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, a major local health network. "This is why we are here: to avoid that ever happening again."
The grand opening on Tuesday was a big moment for everyone who works in this often-painful field. Cops in blue with guns at their sides, paramedics in their fluorescent-striped uniforms, and office staff in civvies gathered to chat, drink coffee, and eat cake.
The room fell silent when Ms. Triano-Antidormi stepped up, a picture of young Zachary on the wall behind her. She has followed the fight for reform ever since Zachary's death, giving talks about her experience and working with police and health care officials to change things. In her psychology practice, she has coached many others on how to cope after loved ones die.
At home, her family still keeps Zachary's memory. The first ornament they put on their Christmas tree is a teddy-bear crossing guard. Both Ms. Triano-Antidormi's grown children, born after Zachary's death, have tattoos in memory of the brother they never knew. Her son has a tattoo with a stop sign held in a boy's hand. Her daughter has the letter Z with angel wings on her finger.
"As you can imagine, I miss Zachary every day and wish he was here every day," Ms. Triano-Antidormi told the hushed room, her voice breaking, "but knowing that can't be possible, I'm thankful that Hamilton has come together."
The city "has stepped up and has never given up." Hamilton, she said, "has made progress from my family's pain."
