Jury hears Toronto woman allegedly murdered by ex-boyfriend called police 3 days prior

Just three days before 23-year-old Daniella Mallia was shot to death in a Toronto underground parking garage in August 2022, her ex-boyfriend Dylan Dowman allegedly sent her text messages threatening to kill her, prompting her to call police to ask for a restraining order.

That’s what the jury was told on the opening day of the first-degree murder trial for Dowman in a downtown Toronto courtroom Tuesday afternoon.

Assistant Crown attorney Maureen Pecknold told jurors in her opening address that Mallia met with a police constable and shared text messages sent from Dowman that read, “You still breathing because I say so” and “Ain’t no coming back from death. You’re done.”

“You will see body-worn camera footage from three days before she was shot to death,” Pecknold told the jury. “You will see she did not want to put a Black man behind bars. All she wanted is what she referred to as a restraining order. What we refer to as a peace bond. She just wanted to feel safe.”

The Crown said police told Mallia how to feel safe and said Dowman and Mallia were told to stop contacting one another.

The jury also heard that evidence will show that only three days after Mallia called police, Dowman took an Uber from the house where he rented a room to the parkade where Mallia was gunned down on the morning of Aug. 18, 2022.

As Mallia was walking along a path towards a courtyard at 2265 Jane St., jurors heard that a man ran up behind her, grabbed her and dragged her into the underground parking garage. The man took a handgun out of a backpack and pointed it at her as Mallia tried to get away.

“He blocked her path over and over again, then he shot her and continued to shoot. Police recovered six spent casings near the body and once he finished shooting, he concealed the gun, left the garage, walked down the street, got on a TTC bus and went to a nearby mall,” Pecknold said.

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Jurors heard Mallia’s body was found a short time later by a resident of the townhouse complex who was walking through the parkade.

The Crown said Dowman and Mallia had been romantically involved on and off for several years and he was someone she was afraid of.

“Members of the jury, this is not a complicated case,” Pecknold said.

She said the Crown will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dowman thought about killing Mallia for at least three days, planned it and told her how he was going to do it.

George Lakatosh, who lived in the complex, was the first witness to testify. He testified that as he was walking towards his van, he noticed a green bag lying on the ground.

“My eyes started following the trail of the bag and I see a body laying straight,” Lakatosh recalled.

Lakatosh testified he was in a hurry because he was taking his wife to the hospital for an appointment so he told a maintenance man to call 911.

“I never seen the body moving at all,” Lakatosh said, explaining he took a couple of photos of the body before pulling out of the parkade “just in case someone says something else.” The photos were shown in court.

Dowman has pleaded not guilty. The trial continues.