Police in the Niagara Region have laid murder charges against an Ontario woman who is alleged to have killed three people in three different cities over three days.
Two of the three were random killings, police said.
The emerging criminal case is a rare example of a woman accused of being a serial killer and alleged to have killed at random.
Sabrina Kauldhar, 30, appeared in court Friday, one day after she was arrested in Burlington. She was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder.
Niagara Regional Police Chief Bill Fordy told reporters that police allege that she is a serial killer, but he did not speak to the accused’s weapons or motivations.
Police continue to investigate in hopes of finding answers that may explain why so many lives were ended in so short a span, Chief Fordy said.
“We have three families here who lost their loved ones,” he said.
“We have in excess of 100 investigators trying to understand why something like this takes place, and to gather as much evidence as possible to bring the accused to court,” he said.
On Tuesday, shortly after 2 p.m., police responded to an emergency call in the city’s west end and found a deceased woman in her sixties. She has not been identified, but Toronto police have said the woman who died and the suspect knew each other.
The next day, at around 3 p.m., police in Niagara Falls, Ont., found 47-year-old Lance Cunningham suffering from critical wounds. He died at the scene.
Shortly after noon on Thursday, police in Hamilton found Mario Bilich, 77, stabbed in a parking lot. He later died in hospital.
Investigators say the two men were randomly targeted.
Police arrested Ms. Kauldhar in nearby Burlington later on Thursday afternoon. She faces a first-degree murder charge in connection with the Hamilton case and second-degree murder charges for the Niagara Falls and Toronto cases.
Video footage from security cameras helped police who were working across jurisdictions to identify the suspect.
Detectives also say they want the public’s help identifying a different woman who was seen at a Burlington Giant Tiger buying clothes earlier this week. The suspect is said to have had those garments in her possession when she was arrested.
While it is rare for women to be accused of committing multiple killings at random, some Canadian cases have emerged in the past.
During the 1990s, authorities in Southern Ontario charged and convicted Karla Homolka for killing three teenaged girls with her husband Paul Bernardo. One of the victims was her sister, but she did not know the other two.
In the 2010s, police in Ontario also charged and convicted nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer with the murders of eight senior citizens in her care.
With a report from The Canadian Press