The opinions expressed in the following episode do not necessarily reflect those of the minds of madness podcast.

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Monday, April 23, 2018 was a surprisingly warm day in Toronto, Ontario, causing residents to be out in droves, ditching their winter coats, eager to enjoy the sunshine.

Among those taken advantage of the warmer weather was 67-year-old Catherine Radelle, headed to the library off of Young Street, when a van suddenly struck her from behind.

The vehicle at Hit Catherine was such force, its center body flying in the air before crashing through a transit shelter.

The strange thing was, Catherine hadn't been hit crossing the street, she'd been walking on the sidewalk. It would be two whole weeks before she'd learned the horrific details of the accident, an accident that hadn't actually been an accident at all.

Join me now, as we take a look into a case that shocked not only the people of Toronto, but all of Canada, in an act of violence that spanned over seven minutes.

You'll hear how investigators in a community search for answers, leaving everyone with a lingering question, why?

Before we get to what happened to Catherine Radelle, we need to take you back a bit further, back to where this tragic story begins, with a man we'll be referring to as John Doe.

As a child, John Doe's parents said he dreamt of becoming a pilot one day, a dream they believed was unlikely, because although John had a talent with numbers, he struggled in many other ways.

Eventually diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, now part of a broader category called Autism Spectrum Disorder.

John had trouble interacting and connecting with other kids at school from the start, his noticeable physical ticks, only making things worse, by drawing even more attention to a boy, already uncomfortable making eye contact with people.

At the high school he attended in Thornhill, kids didn't ease up on John, they made fun of him and laughed at him in the halls, sometimes encouraging him to approach girls, knowing full well he'd be rejected and ridiculed.

In the end, there seemed only three places John felt safest to come out of his shell, at home, in the learning strategy class as he attended, and in an online halo gaming community.

Specifically in the gaming community, John could be who he wanted and do what he wanted, most of all he wasn't alone.

But in spite of the challenges John experienced at school, he managed to graduate successfully and decided to go to college, enrolling in computer programming.

A program he did so well at that within a few years, he transferred to an even more challenging software development program.

Oddly enough, however, just a semester before graduating, John left home and enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces, and although he managed to pass all the tests and interviews to get in, it was hardly an environment he thrived in.

From day one, John came across to the rest of the recruits as shine withdrawn, but what frustrated the most was it didn't appear he could take an order.

Every day it seemed as though John would get an instruction wrong with his entire barrack paying the price with extra push-ups, and after only 16 days in, John requested to be discharged.

His section leader would later state, it was in the back of our minds that giving this guy a firearm probably wouldn't go well.

It wasn't that John appeared violent or unstable, that putting a gun in his hand seemed like a bad idea at the time.

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