Man who set Nyima Dolma on fire on TTC bus not fit for public release, tribunal rules

A Toronto man not found criminally responsible for lighting a nursing student on fire aboard a bus in 2022 could be given privileges to walk around the grounds of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) while "indirectly supervised," an independent provincial tribunal has found.

In an October decision, the Ontario Review Board (ORB) concluded Tenzin Norbu, 35, should remain in custody at CAMH because he continues to pose a significant danger to the public at large.

However given the apparent progress of his treatment and his behaviour since arriving at CAMH, the five-member panel ruled he could be gradually given privileges to leave his unit at the facility for other parts of the hospital.

Such a process would be at the discretion of Norbu's treatment team and hospital administrators and could involve varying degrees of supervision, the board said. It would begin with an indeterminate period of escorted and accompanied passes to leave his unit.

During an August deposition that included CAMH physicians and Norbu himself, the board heard that "much remains unknown" about his specific psychiatric condition, though the working diagnosis is that he has schizophrenia, depression and severe cannabis use disorder.

He has been on antipsychotic and antidepressant medications since he arrived at CAMH in late June, the panel heard.

"Mr. Norbu's course at CAMH has been uneventful. There have been no instances of violence or aggression. Mr. Norbu is described as consistently calm and co-operative with staff, and as interacting appropriately with co-patients. He indicated that he liked socializing with others on the unit and denied any suicidal or violent thoughts. Furthermore, he denied any symptoms of psychosis," the decision said.

On June 11, Norbu was found not criminally responsible for the death of 28-year-old Nyima Dolma.

Some two years earlier aboard a TTC bus, Norbu doused Dolma in lighter fluid and set her ablaze. She died in hospital from her injuries 18 days later, three months away from completing her nursing degree.

Norbu and Dolma were strangers, but both had been born in Tibet. Norbu was charged with first-degree murder in her death.

History of mental illness, sexual abuse, panel hears

The review board decision said Norbu gave police differing and often incoherent accounts of his actions that day. At the time, he was smoking between six and seven grams of cannabis mixed with tobacco every day and most likely having auditory hallucinations. 

Norbu told detectives he believed Dolma was either filming him with her cell phone or viewing a video before he lit her on fire.

He said he had once dated a woman who had a video of him masturbating that she later shared with others in the Tibetan community. During one interview with police, Norbu said he thought Dolma may have been watching the video that day.

Since immigrating to Canada in 2008 or 2009, Norbu had grown increasingly alienated from the Tibetan community in Toronto. He spent almost of all his time alone in his room in the west-end home where he lived with his mother, sister and brother-in-law. Norbu would frequently go out alone at night, though his family did not know where, the panel wrote in its decision.

He last held a job in 2012 and had been on the Ontario Disability Support Program since, the review board decision noted. 

Norbu had a fixation with self-immolation and persistent suicidal ideation, the panel heard. His older brother, with whom Norbu was very close, had taken his own life via self immolation in 2008, though family members gave differing accounts of the circumstances of his death.

Norbu also told doctors and the board that he was the victim of repeated sexual assaults by older children while at a boarding school for boys in India as a child, and that he was raped when he was 10 years old. 

While he had never been convicted of a crime when he set Dolma on fire in June 2022, Norbu "nevertheless has a prior history of violent aggression, including actual physical assaults" and an "underlying level of anger," the decision said.

"Although several violent incidents were directed at members of the Tibetan community, others were not so limited," it continued.

The ORB will re-assess Norbu's medical condition late next year.