Just weeks after Toronto police issued a warning about a high-risk offender they said posed a risk to the community and children, the OPP said that they are on the lookout for Simon Gares.
The OPP’s ROPE Squad said that the 43-year-old man is being sought on a Canada-wide warrant as he has reportedly breached his statutory release.
OPP described him as being around 5’10” tall, while weighing around 170 lbs., with brown hair and hazel eyes. He has a lengthy list of tattoos including a dragon on his right shoulder, a tribal joker on hos left shoulder, an Irish Cross on his right forearm and “TWISTED” inscribed on his back.
He also has barbed wire tattooed on both wrists with “LIFE IS SIMPLE” written on the right and a star symbol, the number five and “SHY NO” on the left.
Gares was released from prison to reside in a community-based residential facility in Toronto on statutory release March 14, and less than two weeks later, Toronto police issued their warning.
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The OPP said he is currently serving an eight-month and seventeen-day sentence for: breach of a long-term supervision order.
Toronto police said they were notifying the public about Gares because of his demonstrated risk to the community and children.
While on statutory release, Gares held numerous conditions, including not entering drinking establishments, not consuming alcohol, not consuming drugs, and following a treatment plan.
Gares was convicted of assault causing bodily harm in 2019 and found to be a dangerous offender, according to police.
Court documents showed Gares’ victim was a five-year-old child who, in 2016, was assaulted while entering a bakery with his mother and brother.
Multiple witnesses reported seeing Gares kick the child with great force, according to the documents. The young child was rendered temporarily unconscious and taken to hospital.
Court documents also showed that in 2013, Gares “threatened to kill elementary school aged children” when he was angered by the Children’s Aid Society’s refusal to allow him access to his own children.
Records show his lawyer felt these threats to be “sufficiently serious to necessitate informing the police.”
He was convicted on two charges of threatening death, theft, assault with intent to resist arrest and for failing to comply with probation.
Upon his release in 2015, police issued a public warning to about two dozen public schools in his former neighborhood, sending home letters to parents about his “threat to public safety.”
— with files from Global News
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