A woman who was arrested after a dramatic downtown standoff Thursday afternoon has now been charged with attempted murder in the knife attack on a Rosedale condominium doorman.

Ellis Kirkland, 60, also faces charges of aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and weapons dangerous to the public peace.

A Harvard-educated architect and proponent of international trade and development, Kirkland’s photo and description were circulated by Toronto police Thursday morning after a 67-year-old man was stabbed “multiple times with a large kitchen knife” in the Rosedale condominium co-op building where she lives.

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Kirkland was arrested Thursday afternoon on a 27th-storey balcony at the Town Inn Suites on Church St., where she could be seen peering over the edge and periodically dangling her legs.

Police negotiated with her for several hours before Emergency Task Force officers rappelled down from the roof to make the arrest.

As of Friday morning, the 67-year-old stabbing victim has been moved out of the intensive care unit and his condition is improving after undergoing emergency surgery Thursday, police said.

The victim was originally rushed to a local trauma centre with life-threatening injuries following the incident.

Resident Andy Rubelis called the incident a “tragedy,” saying the victim had planned to retire soon.

Born in Malta and educated at Harvard University, Kirkland co-founded the Kirkland Partnership, a well-regarded architecture firm that has done work on waterfront projects in China and around the world. She became the first female president of the Ontario Association of Architects.

According to her LinkedIn profile, the 60-year-old has been a vice-president at the NATO Association of Canada — an education and support group for the international organization with an executive that has included former Senator Hugh Segal and former foreign minister Bill Graham — since 1999, and has written and researched extensively on global development.

In 2003 she founded the NATO Paxbuild Economic Platform, whose aim is to foster growth and prosperity in post-conflict zones, failed states and areas affected by natural disasters.

Profiled in the Star in 2005, Kirkland said: “I just want to help others to rebuild their world . . . This, for me, has meaning.”

Sasha Josipovicz said he met Kirkland in the early 1980s, when he was helping out at the Toronto architecture firm where Kirkland worked.

“She was a really determined and hard-working person,” Josipovicz said, describing how she once became so exhausted chasing a business deal in China that she had to be carried off the plane when she returned to Toronto.

“We were jokingly calling her the Maltese Falcon in the 1980s, because she was genuinely flying high, based on her own merit,” said Josipovicz.

According to the 2005 Star profile, Kirkland was a cancer survivor. Glazner, Kirkland’s neighbour, said that both her second husband and her father had died in recent years.

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“That was pretty upsetting for her because she felt very alone,” he said.

“She struck me as a very intense, intellectual person who cared a lot about the building . . . My sense was that she is a compassionate woman and this is completely out of character, which says that something went on in her head.”

With files from Dan Taekema and Christopher Reynolds