The terrifying day an Ontario judge and his court was held hostage in a bomb plot that was kept quiet

Article content

“It doesn’t matter, sir,” Kesgin replied. “I died so many times you cannot imagine.”

Article content

Kesgin didn’t know it, but by then Myers had secretly pressed an emergency button under the judge’s bench and had dialled 911 on his phone. His iPhone was connected wirelessly to his hearing aid, and he could hear the emergency dispatcher’s questions and was trying to answer them as if he was speaking to Kesgin.

Article content

Myers said his staff should leave Courtroom 901 at 393 University Ave., a message also meant for the 911 dispatcher.

Article content

“If my heart rate goes below my resting rate, the device will explode,” Serken Kesgin told the courtroom in August 2019. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Article content

The man’s former wife, who sat terrified, saw that as her cue and suddenly bolted towards a door behind the judge’s bench and Kesgin chased her, allowing Toronto police court security officers who had arrived to rush in and grab him.

Article content

Myers ducked under his heavy wooden bench and braced for a blast.

Article content

“It’s going to go off,” Kesgin called to the officers.

Article content

“Well, if anybody’s dying, you’re dying too. Let’s go,” an officer can be heard saying as one officer held Kesgin and another pried his laptop bag out of one hand and a controller from the other, according to the officers’ notebooks from that day.

Article content

Article content

The court’s reporter later said she and a colleague were “like two chickens running out of the courtroom in a flight.” Staff were terrified and traumatized. Myers made sure he was the last to leave.

Article content

About 50 people from two floors of the courthouse were evacuated as police and fire crews arrived. A bomb sniffing dog searched the building and officers examined Kesgin’s bomb.

Article content

It was a fake, made of Play-Doh modelling clay, wax, wires, a 9-volt battery, circuit boards and a handheld device. Kesgin had also brought duct tape and zip ties, which can be used to restrain people.

Article content

Myers had been right. Kesgin’s bomb plot was not a good legal strategy. He was arrested and charged with possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose, intimidating the justice system, hostage taking, attempted kidnapping, and failure to comply with a court order.

Article content

Kesgin’s marriage had lasted barely a year and had dissolved four years before his courthouse drama.

Article content

Long before the hearing, he was struggling with the process. He had already been found in contempt of a restraining order, in breach of child support orders, and threatened with a harassment charge if he didn’t shape up. Despite having a job as a software engineer that paid $150,000 annually, he was $30,000 behind in child support, court records said.

Article content

Article content

After his courtroom attack, Kesgin pleaded guilty to the charges in 2021 at a hearing held over Zoom. He told court he understood there would be immigration ramifications to his guilty plea. “I am prepared to leave the country voluntarily,” he told the judge.

Article content

Judge Bruce Durno heard that Kesgin moved to Canada in 2010 and returned to Turkey after his marriage failed. He came back to Canada in 2018 on a work permit in a bid to regain parental rights. Kesgin presented letters from friends attesting to his intelligence, work ethic and friendly demeanour before his family turmoil. He had no criminal record.

Article content

The prosecutor, Marnie Goldenberg, called Kesgin’s crimes “an act of terrorism.”

Article content

“A free society cannot survive when activists or protestors, no matter how passionately they hold their beliefs, deliberately break the law in an effort to impose their will on others by dangerous and unlawful intimidation,” Goldenberg said.

Article content

She sought a sentence of between eight and 14 years in prison. Kesgin’s lawyer, Coulson Mills, asked for five years.

Article content

“I am frankly astonished how that device made it into the courthouse,” Mills said at one of his client’s hearings. Durno was told the courthouse didn’t have a screening device to detect such things at the time, which might be one reason authorities didn’t mention the incident. By the time Kesgin was sentenced, that had been fixed.