The widow of Toronto Police Sgt. Ryan Russell knew her husband’s killer was on the fast track to freedom as soon as a jury found him not criminally responsible four years ago.

But Christine Russell never imagined that Richard Kachkar would be released from his psychiatric hospital and no one would bother to let her know. She was only informed Wednesday, just 24 hours before his scheduled annual appearance before the Ontario Review Board, that for the last two months, he’s been out in a Canadian Mental Health Association apartment in Durham.

Surprise.

It’s outrageous that any victim could be treated in such a cavalier manner. She knows she shouldn’t be surprised, after going through this process for years now, and yet she is just the same.

“I’m speechless,” Russell says. “What if I’m in Tim Hortons with my son? I could come face to face with him. I just think it’s appalling. He moved out in April and I’m only finding out about it now? Am I not part of this process?”

She isn’t, of course. She’s allowed to make a victim impact statement each year, and each year, she pours out her broken heart, telling the board - and Kachkar - about how his running down her husband with a stolen snow plow devastated her life and that of their young son Nolan, now 8.

Russell doesn’t think they hear a word.

“I’m just overlooked completely. Everything I’ve done and said has no bearing. It’s hard to go every year but I try my best to honour my husband who can’t fight for himself and so that my son will know that I’ve done everything that I could. I didn’t just sit back and let this happen.”

Originally charged with first-degree murder, a jury in 2013 found Kachkar was mentally ill when he fled a homeless shelter in his bare feet two years earlier, stole an idling plow and proceeded to go on a violent joyride through midtown Toronto, striking the 35-year-old sergeant on Avenue Rd.

The mandate of the ORB is to see that the NCR patient is treated and released as soon as it’s safe for him and the community. Kachkar was sent to Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences in Whitby where he was gradually moved out of the secure forensic unit into minimum security in 2015 and last year was given unsupervised passes into the community.

His 2016 disposition also included a clause where he could eventually live in Durham in approved accommodation. So while Russell knew it was a possibility, she expected that there’d be another hearing before it was granted. Or at the very least, some notification.

She was mistaken on both counts.

Her victim witness worker told her Kachkar has been living in this apartment since mid-April and is visited by a Canadian Mental Health worker twice a day during the week and once daily on weekends. At his hearing Thursday, the recommended change for the next year is that he be given 72-hour indirectly supervised community passes within 150 km of Ontario Shores so he can visit his daughter.

Russell has no doubt that he’ll be granted that as well.

“He wants to travel to spend time with his daughter. My son can’t travel anywhere, ever, to spend time with his dad,” she says. “It doesn’t feel like justice.”

Her victim impact statement for this year’s hearing had already been filed before Russell learned this shocking news - the ORB requires an advance copy to sanitize it so her words aren’t too emotional or unfair. Now she doesn’t know if she’ll even be able to express her outrage at his release.

“It’s a lost cause anyway,” she sighs.

But Russell will go yet again to Ontario Shores, where Kachkar usually sits without expression as the psychiatrists speak clinically about his “index offence” and model behaviour. He never looks at her. Never addresses her with any words of remorse.

And now he’s practically free.

“I’m just defeated,” the widow says. “I feel like he’s just going to blend back into the community and everything will be okay for him.”

While their lives will never be the same.

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