24-06-2025
Family storm out of court as judge acquits ‘Good Samaritans' in death of man who went on sudden ‘rampage' inside Toronto Jack Astor's
The courtroom remained largely silent as Superior Court Justice Michael Dineen read his judgment Tuesday in the case of two 'Good Samaritans' charged with manslaughter after restraining a violent Scarborough bar patron who later died.
That is, until the judge read his verdict: not guilty.
Relatives of the 32-year-old victim, Frank Harbalis,
stormed out of the courtroom as someone could be heard saying 'F—- off' and 'F—- you' while the judge was still speaking on the bench. The defendants, Alexander Campbell and Tyler Josling, collapsed into tears, seated next to their lawyers as their equally emotional family members broke out into applause.
'I find that the role of the defendants in the incident was the laudable one of trying to protect others from serious harm,' Dineen said.
'The defendants in this case were acting as
Good Samaritans
. This does not give carte blanche to employ disproportionate force in response to a violent situation, but it militates in favour of a more forgiving standard when assessing the reasonableness of their decisions.'
The judge-alone trial heard earlier this year that Harbalis had been drinking beer for several hours at Jack Astor's at Scarborough Town Centre on July 11, 2022, before being cut off as he was seen wandering around the establishment speaking to strangers in a manner that struck a bartender as unusual. He repeatedly asked for the bartender's name, and touched her hair when settling up his bill.
Frank Harbalis returns to Jack Astor's looking for his cellphone and suddenly punches floor manager Trevor Jaijairam. Source: Ontario Superior Court Exhibit
He left the bar by climbing over a seven-foot glass wall on the patio, only to later return looking for his cellphone. While Dineen said surveillance footage shows Harbalis initially appearing to have a calm conversation with the floor manager, he soon punched the manager in the face 'with considerable force.' The manager testified that Harbalis 'had not appeared angry before this and it was like a switch being flipped,' according to Dineen's judgment.
Harbalis continued to throw punches and chase the manager before hitting another manager in the head with a chair, in what Dineen described as an 'apparent violent rampage.'
At this point, Campbell and Josling, two 26-year-old men who were at the bar together and who did not know Harbalis, came rushing over and helped restrain him on the floor with the two managers he had attacked. One of the managers unsuccessfully tried to tie Harbalis's arms and then his legs with telephone wire as the six-foot-two, 275-pound man continued to struggle.
The four men held Harbalis down for about 10 minutes until first responders arrived, at which point he was unconscious with fading vital signs. Harbalis died in hospital two days later. An autopsy showed his death was caused by neck compression that either cut off blood flow to his brain, or was a contributing factor to sudden cardiac arrest in combination with the stress of the situation and Harbalis's pre-existing heart condition. (He had an abnormally large heart and chronic heart disease.)
'I do not know what came over Mr. Harbalis to cause his sudden violent behaviour that night, but it is tragic that he was not able to receive the help he clearly needed,' Dineen said.
Surveillance footage shows Frank Harbalis attacking two Jack Astor's managers, including hitting one with a chair, before being restrained by the managers and good Samaritans Alexander Campbell and Tyler Josling. Source: Ontario Superior Court Exhibit
Crown attorney Andrew Pilla argued that Campbell used excessive force by putting Harbalis in a chokehold, while Josling encouraged Campbell by saying, 'put him to sleep.' Pilla also argued that their motivation wasn't purely defensive, but rather 'punitive' because of Harbalis's actions toward the female bartender earlier, which the two men had witnessed.
Defence lawyer Peter Thorning argued any force applied by Campbell was defensive and reasonable, while Josling's lawyer Marco Sciarra disputed that he did anything to encourage unreasonable force.
Dineen rejected some of the evidence from several eyewitnesses called by the Crown, as some of their recollections were contradicted by surveillance footage, while others couldn't remember if their recollection was based on what they saw or what they heard from someone else.
One of the managers told police he observed Campbell place Harbalis in a brief chokehold at the start of the struggle, but testified that after watching Ultimate Fighting Championship matches, he no longer believes what he saw was a chokehold, but possibly Campbell placing his arm around Harbalis's shoulder. The other manager testified he never saw anyone do anything to Harbalis other than try to hold him down.
Dineen accepted a patron saw Campbell place Harbalis in a chokehold at the beginning of the struggle for about 80 seconds when the much larger Harbalis was still trying to get up, but the judge was unable to find that either defendant applied any other force afterward, other than holding Harbalis down.
'It is possible that Mr. Campbell choked Mr. Harbalis for some extended period during this time with the encouragement of Mr. Josling and possible that this could have caused death by asphyxia rather than heart failure,' Dineen said.
'I find, however, that the evidence is equally consistent with a brief period of choking in the very early stages of the struggle that was one cause of a later sudden cardiac failure.'
The judge concluded that Campbell's actions were not criminal; given that finding, the judge said he wasn't required to determine whether Josling had been abetting him.
'I find that the most that has been proven is that the defendants may have made a brief misjudgment about the amount of force necessary and appropriate to get Mr. Harbalis under control,' Dineen said.
'They were making decisions in the face of a real threat of harm to others and with little time for careful consideration. They were trying to help. I do not believe that they meant to cause serious harm to Mr. Harbalis. I also do not believe that it can be said that this brief misjudgment rose to the level of being unreasonable in all of the circumstances, making criminal liability appropriate.'
Campbell and Josling declined to comment Tuesday, with the latter giving a thumbs up as he exited the courthouse with his family. Thorning said his client, Campbell, was 'grateful to the judge for reviewing the evidence in such a close and careful way.'
Josling's lawyer, Sciarra, said it was unfortunate what happened to Harbalis, but that it was never anyone's intention for him to die.
'They're the only two people in a bar full of people who helped,' Sciarra said.
'I think they were being prosecuted for the very fact that they did what nobody else did, which is help these two managers who both testified that without their help, they would have probably not been here to testify at this trial.'
