Breeanna Bascombe Did Nothing Wrong. She Was Arrested Anyway

BREEANNA BASCOMBE HAD been up all night.

Tiana*, her six-month-old daughter with big brown eyes and a light-brown complexion—a spitting image of Breeanna’s ex-boyfriend Dayne Sitladeen—wouldn’t stop crying. She tried everything. It was one of those nights when the last thread of patience snaps and so does a sleep-deprived parent: Breeanna yelled at Tiana.

It didn’t work, of course. It just made Breeanna feel worse. She continued rocking and shushing Tiana until the baby eventually gave in to sleep.

The past few months hadn’t been easy on Breeanna. Ten months prior, in May 2019, Sitladeen, a Toronto rapper known as Yung Lava, disappeared when he became wanted for the first-degree murder of 26-year-old Blain Grindley. Two of the men also wanted for the murder had surrendered, but Sitladeen left Breeanna without any clue about where he was headed or what he had done. At the time, Breeanna was pregnant with Tiana, the couple’s second child.

She wasn’t upset that Sitladeen was gone. They had broken up months earlier because of Sitladeen’s lying and cheating and run-ins with the law. They met in 2014, when Breeanna, then 21 years old, was working at Conair, a hair-product manufacturer, to support her dream of being an actress. She saw a light shining over him, as if God had selected him for her. She was head over heels. But that feeling was long gone. Now, when Breeanna saw his face on the evening news as she nursed her newborn and tried to move on with her life, she was, frankly, over it.

There was much to be distracted by anyway. A week prior, Breeanna had celebrated her 27th birthday. Two days later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Two days after that, on March 13, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman from Louisiana, was fatally shot when plainclothes police officers forced entry into her home looking for her ex-boyfriend, who had been using her address to mail drugs—another tragedy in the ongoing crisis of racially motivated police brutality.

On March 17, at about 1 p.m., a groggy Breeanna was breastfeeding Tiana in the bedroom she shared with her two daughters at her parents’ house in Brampton, Ont., when the ring of the doorbell pierced the early afternoon air. “Maybe it’s a package,” she thought. Wearing shorts, a white top and no bra, Breeanna took her kids downstairs, where plainclothes Toronto police officers were in the living room.

“Put some clothes on,” the male officer said. When she returned to the living room fully dressed, more police, nearly all women, had spilled into every nook of the house, looking apologetic.

“We’re here to arrest you,” another officer said. “You’re being charged with accessory after the fact to murder.”

Breeanna started sobbing. Murder? She knew nothing about what Sitladeen had done—she hadn’t been in contact with him for nearly a year. Then another thought filled her with dread: What would happen to Tiana?

Breeanna asked officers if she could bring Tiana to the police station so she could breastfeed her. Tiana wasn’t on formula, and Breeanna didn’t pump. As officers arrested Breeanna in front of her daughters and family, Tiana stared at her with those big eyes. “This little girl is going to be looking for food in about an hour, and I’m not going to be there to feed her,” she thought.

Breeanna thought back to the night before, when she had become frustrated with her baby. “I kind of felt like it was karma for me because of the way I yelled at Tiana.”

But now she was in handcuffs, ripped away from her children, her family. She’d never worried that she’d be arrested for something Sitladeen did. The love of her life had turned into her worst nightmare. “He had an opportunity to tell me the truth and to tell me what was going to happen,” she says. “He left me for dead. He literally left me for dead.”

***

AT THE STATION, Breeanna, with her breasts engorged, sat in front of homicide detective Steve Henkel of the Toronto Police Service and, exhausted, explained that she had not been in contact with Sitladeen since he’d left 10 months ago.

The last time they had seen each other was just after Mother’s Day in 2019. They had been estranged for two months; Breeanna had packed her things and moved out of their shared apartment and into her parents’ home. She had also just found out she was pregnant again. Sitladeen had wanted to see her and Sahara*, their eldest daughter. When she saw him, she knew something was wrong. She tried asking for answers, but he was evasive.

A few days later, while watching the news at her parents’ house, Sitladeen’s face, along with those of two other men, appeared on the screen: There was a Canada-wide arrest warrant for them for the murder of Grindley, who was killed on May 1, 2019.

Sitladeen had had a few run-ins with the law, but Breeanna had never expected something like this. “Of all the men in Toronto, why does this have to be my child’s father?” she thought.

The next day, Breeanna went to a Toronto courthouse and, fearing retaliation for what Sitladeen had allegedly done, asked for protection for herself and her daughter. She even removed her name as Sitladeen’s surety. With no way to contact Sitladeen, she begged his friends to tell him, if they knew where he was, to turn himself in. The only thing she was guilty of was falling in love with him and who he was at his core—a funny, magnetic person with the kind of qualities she’d envisioned in a husband. “I’m not a street girl. I’m not from the hood,” she says. “I’m not the type to hold my guy’s gun in my bag. I will hold you down. But to be riding with you in the streets? I’m definitely not that girl.”

She told Henkel all this. But something about what Henkel had done didn’t sit right with her. “I told him, ‘You know that I just had my daughter and that I’m breastfeeding her. You didn’t have to arrest me like this.’ And he said, ‘Well, I could’ve arrested you while you were pregnant with her.’” (Henkel has since retired. The Toronto Police Service and Henkel have refused to comment for this story because Sitladeen’s case is still open.) “The fact that he came into my house and took me away from my daughter so she can starve? That’s disgusting.”

Tiana did starve that night: Breeanna’s parents couldn’t get her to drink formula. While a senior-level officer eventually agreed to let Tiana be brought in so Breeanna could breastfeed her, Breeanna’s mother was able to rock the baby to sleep at home. Breeanna never saw Tiana that night. “My daughter was hysterical,” she says. “She was bawling.”

It wasn’t the first time Breeanna had been arrested for something Sitladeen had done. In June 2017, one year after they had started dating and six months after Sitladeen began living with Breeanna in her parents’ basement having just been released from jail, police raided the house. It came after an anonymous tip that Sitladeen was going to harm the person who’d killed his brother a month earlier.

Police found a gun hidden in the basement. They arrested Sitladeen, and Breeanna was also charged with gun-related offences. She was sent to Vanier Centre for Women, a medium and maximum correctional facility for female offenders in Milton, Ont., where she stayed for 11 days—one of the worst experiences of her life. Right after her release, Breeanna learned she was pregnant.

“My whole life, I’d never had an interaction with the police,” says Breeanna. “I hadn’t even been suspended from school.” Her charges were eventually dropped, though Sitladeen remained in jail. But Breeanna’s family was traumatized by the raid. Years later, it would prevent Breeanna’s younger brother—who was forced onto the ground during the operation—from fulfilling his dream of becoming a police officer. Breeanna gave birth to Sahara the following February, and five months later, Sitladeen was released from prison. She forgave him, and they moved into their own apartment to become a family. Now, two years later, she was arrested again, but under unimaginable circumstances.

Sitting in the investigation room, she thought about Breonna Taylor. “I compare my situation to hers,” she says. “They could have come to my house and pulled the trigger and killed me. What if it had gone a completely different way?”

***

TEN MONTHS LATER, Breeanna’s charges were stayed. The stay meant her charge was on hold with a one-year time limit for the Crown to revive the case. They chose not to. But life hasn’t gone back to normal for Breeanna. She struggles with PTSD and nightmares. She’s afraid of being separated from her children again. When she searches her name on Google, stories about the case still populate the first page. Though she was never convicted of a crime, Breeanna now has a non-conviction record, which includes charges police lay that are later withdrawn, dismissed or stayed. The charges could remain on her criminal record indefinitely and can show up on background checks, affecting her ability to rent a home, get a job, be accepted into a post-secondary-education program, volunteer at her children’s school, travel and even adopt a dog.

But this isn’t an isolated story: Breeanna’s case reflects the thousands of Canadians who are charged with crimes they didn’t commit or whose actions didn’t warrant a criminal charge, leaving them with a life-altering non-conviction.

According to Statistics Canada, more than 45 percent of charges in the country between 2020 and 2021 were stayed or withdrawn. In Alberta and Ontario, more than half of all charges laid are dropped or stayed. In most provinces, police have complete discretion to charge people as long as they have reasonable grounds to believe they committed a crime. But numerous studies show that racial bias causes Black and Indigenous people to be overcharged with lower-quality and “out-of-sight” charges, like driving without a licence, and they’re more likely to have those charges dropped than white people.

While men are more likely to have non-convictions, women, especially those who are racialized, face their own challenges. A 2020 report by criminologists Scot Wortley and Maria Jung found that the non-conviction rate for Black women in Toronto is 2.2 times higher than the rate for white women and 5.5 times higher than the rate for other racial groups of women.

Data on Canada-wide non-convictions is sparse, but wrongful-conviction data helps illustrate the path of injustice. The Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions—launched in February 2023 and co-created by Kent Roach, a law professor at the University of Toronto, and Métis lawyer Amanda Carling—found that women made up 40 percent of false guilty pleas. Lack of familiarity with the legal system, ineffective counsel and police bias also play a role. Several studies show that women are more likely to be wrongfully convicted in cases of child abuse and drug violations and are also more likely to be convicted of “imagined crimes,” or crimes that never occurred or are accidental. In the majority of women’s wrongful convictions in North America, charges were the result of unethical policing and prosecutorial misconduct. Black and Indigenous women are even more likely to be wrongfully convicted.

And wrongful charges can turn into wrongful convictions. It’s a terrifying path that Breeanna could’ve gone down without the right lawyers, a good support system and even a bit of divine timing. And for that, despite it all, Breeanna considers herself lucky.

***

THE MORNING AFTER she was arrested and held in custody that March, Breeanna went before a judge at a west-end Toronto courthouse, sobbing and ready to go home. Her shirt was stained with milk—she had not been able to see or feed her daughter since she’d been arrested the night before. But instead of releasing her, the judge sympathetically told her she was going straight to the Vanier Centre for Women, where she would await trial. She did not have the option of bail.

A woman sitting in the courtroom approached Breeanna. The woman, Lisa Jørgensen, was a lawyer at Ruby Shiller Enenajor DiGiuseppe. She recognized Breeanna’s name from the news. Jørgensen was horrified that Breeanna had been charged with accessory to murder with no evidence and was being sent to a correctional facility instead of being released.

Luckily, Jørgensen was able to pull some strings and get Breeanna released on bail— and she offered to represent her.

“This woman came out of nowhere,” says Breeanna. “God really sent her as my guardian angel.”

Jørgensen eventually took on another position, and Breeanna was subsequently represented by Jørgensen’s colleague, Annamaria Enenajor. “What drew me to this case was really that we are both racialized women,” says Enenajor. “And we were going through the same thing at the same time. She had just given birth and was breastfeeding when she was arrested. And I had just given birth and was breastfeeding when I learned of her case.”

As a new mother, Enenajor was appalled by Breeanna’s treatment throughout the investigation, particularly the decision to hold her in custody overnight and deny her bail during the early weeks of the pandemic—and especially when she was not a risk to the public. Enenajor says this is a common theme when women are placed in custody. “It’s not only a punishment of them, it’s often a punishment of their children as well, which is something that we often don’t take into consideration when we are assessing the impact that putting women in custody has.”

Breeanna feels that because she is a Black woman, a single mother and the ex-partner of a Black rapper, she was unfairly criminalized. Enenajor has witnessed this before. “It’s not surprising to me at all that when there is somebody who is accused of homicide and there is a woman who’s had a child with him and had a relationship with him in the past—particularly when she is a woman of colour— the police will go after her and use her as a pawn to make attempts to either facilitate her [partner] surrender, obtain additional evidence against them or coerce the woman into co-operating,” she says. “[For], it was basically guilt by association because she was within his sphere.”

***

IT WAS –1 degree in Minnesota on January 20, 2021, when Sitladeen and Muzamil Aden Addow, also wanted in Ontario for the kidnapping of a wealthy Chinese student, were apprehended by a state trooper who’d pulled them over for speeding. The officer found 67 guns with magazines and ammunition in the car. Sitladeen pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting unlawful possession of firearms. In March 2022, he was extradited to Canada.

Once Sitladeen was arrested, Breeanna received her prosecutorial stay. Prosecutorial stays can happen when there is no evidence that could lead to a conviction or when there’s still an ongoing police investigation. Stays never determine innocence or guilt.

Enenajor thinks Breeanna’s charges were stayed instead of withdrawn to force her to be a witness at Sitladeen’s and the other two men’s trials. For months prior to Sitladeen’s capture, Enenajor tried to obtain the disclosure—the evidence that outlines the case against an accused—for Breeanna’s case from police and the Crown, but due in part to COVID-19-related delays, she never received it or any more evidence linking Breeanna to the charge.

Roach, of the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions, says police can charge someone with accessory after the fact in the hope that that person will help their case. “Sometimes the police will charge people hoping that they will flip or snitch. And in some ways, the Criminal Code allows that,” says Roach. “Those charges, in some cases, may go away if that person decides to be a witness for the prosecution.”

Breeanna was subpoenaed to testify at the April 2021 trial of the two men who were charged alongside Sitladeen with first-degree murder. (One of the men was charged with manslaughter and the other had his charges withdrawn.) In court, Breeanna told the Crown and Toronto police about the hardship they’d caused her. She says she received a verbal apology from the prosecutors, who acknowledged what she had been put through. While she accepted the apology, it didn’t come from who she expected. “They did not have to arrest me and put my name all over social media and the news. But [Det] did that so [Sitladeen] would see it,” she says. “He wanted [Sitladeen] to look at the TV and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, they have my child’s mother, I need to do something.’ And it didn’t work.”

Roach says that while an apology from the Crown is significant, it doesn’t take away from the consequences of a stayed charge, especially for people of colour, who face stereotypes about inherent criminality. “One of my concerns of a stay is it may have some residual stigma on a person,” he says. “And it becomes this kind of lingering suspicion that can never be legally or socially discharged.”

In most Canadian provinces, laying charges is at the sole discretion of the police, who do not have to consult with the Crown beforehand. “Police often approach things with a focus on suspicion and evidence that is consistent with a hypothesis of guilt as opposed to evidence that is inconsistent,” says Roach. It’s why charges like accessory after the fact are often struck down in court: They require a high level of proof of criminal intent, he says. Roach believes that more provinces should adopt the model that British Columbia and, more recently, Alberta follow, which requires prosecutors to screen criminal charges before police lay them. This would save money, resources and court time and reduce non-convictions.

Sitladeen’s trial is scheduled for September 11, 2023. Breeanna is worried that the Crown will try to subpoena her again.

When reached for this story, Toronto Police refused to comment because Breeanna’s charges were not withdrawn but stayed. They cited Sitladeen’s open case as the reason they won’t comment. “These challenges you mention by Bascombe will play out in court as the case is still ongoing,” a communications officer said via email.

But it’s Sitladeen’s case that’s ongoing, not Breeanna’s. It’s a “troubling” comment, says Enenajor, because while the one-year limit for the Crown to prosecute Breeanna has passed, she could be charged again if new evidence emerges. “If the police sought to charge Breeanna for the same offence again in order to compel her continued co-operation in the prosecution of her former partner, that would certainly be challenged as an abuse of process contrary to her rights under the Charter,” says Enenajor. “The police should not be able to use women to gain a tactical advantage over their relatives. It’s downright abusive.”

***

WHEN I SPEAK to Breeanna for this story—nearly three years since she was arrested—she’s enjoying her freedom and getting ready to celebrate her 30th birthday.

The day before, Sitladeen called to check up on their daughters and thank her for being a great mother. He also apologized for everything he’d put her through. “I’ve heard this a million times,” she says.

Now, Breeanna is focused on herself and her kids. She took her daughters to Disneyland. She’s achieving her dream of being an actor. She also wants to write a book about her life—and hopefully star in a movie about it. Over the past few years, she’s begun learning more about spirituality. She’s been taking salt baths, manifesting, practising self-love affirmations and praying.

These days, Breeanna keeps a small circle—she lost many friends when she was arrested. She also struggles to date. “I was pregnant alone. I gave birth alone,” she says. “I’ve been through so much by myself that a man really can’t do anything for me because I’ve done so much for myself.”

Some days are good, but there are many bad ones. The nightmares leave her drenched in sweat. Sometimes she’s overcome by emotion, and she starts sobbing in the middle of a task or she dissociates. She can’t even pass a police officer on the street without shaking. “I’m traumatized by the situation,” she says. “I fear that the police can come any time and just arrest me for something I didn’t do.” She’s terrified of being separated from her children again.

“My friends say, ‘Breeanna, you’re so strong, that’s why I don’t have to worry about you.’ But that’s just what I show them,” she says. “Behind closed doors, I’m very weak. I’m emotional, depressed and lonely.”

She mourns the person she was before she met Sitladeen—a girl who, despite her family’s several evictions and relocations, graduated on time. A teen who worked endless jobs to help pay for the photo shoots an emerging actress needs to make it big in Hollywood. A young woman who dreamed of a life of glitz and glamour—of worldwide recognition and, eventually, children, a husband and a big house in the U.S. Someone who was sociable, trusting and excited about her future.

In February 2022, after the Crown’s one-year limitation on her stay expired, Breeanna successfully applied to have her record, along with her fingerprints and photos, destroyed. But it hasn’t been enough: Breeanna still can’t find full-time work. “I had over 10 years of customer service before I was arrested,” she says. “Now no one is looking twice at me because the first thing they see when they look up my name is a murder charge.” Breeanna survives on child benefits and temporary jobs—when people don’t Google her. In December 2022, she had to apply for social assistance to help her pay rent.

Breeanna has also tried to get her story taken down from news sites, but it’s been difficult. As an aspiring actress, she finds it disheartening. “It’s bittersweet because I’m slowly building a resumé for myself where if you Google my name, you’ll see my acting credits but also that I was arrested for this,” she says. “It just really sucks.”

She tries to keep away from social media and the victim-blaming posts. She wants people to know she’s a good person and mother. “I tried my whole life to not get the bad guys’ attention. I just saw something in Dayne that I thought was different.”

Throughout our long chat, Breeanna often blames herself for what Sitladeen did: If she had been home all the time, he wouldn’t have gotten into trouble. If she hadn’t yelled at Tiana that night, her baby wouldn’t have gone hungry. If she hadn’t been so blinded by love, she wouldn’t be in this situation. So, I ask her, has she forgiven herself?

It’s a question she’s never considered and doesn’t know if she’s even ready to. “I allowed so much hurt from people who came in and destroyed my name, and I’m trying to forgive myself for that,” she says. “It’s so hard to forgive myself and move on when so much is still holding me back.”

Breeanna is still trying to make sense of the trials she’s had to endure in her young life and the reasons she and Sitladeen crossed paths. “This all has to mean something,” she says. “I’ve been through all of this and overcome it for a reason. I have these two daughters looking at me. And I know God has my back.”

For the past several years, every year has been a bad one for Breeanna. This year, her milestone birthday will usher her into a new decade and a new chapter, and she’s hoping for a different story. She doesn’t have big plans for her 30th—maybe dinner with some friends, maybe nothing. But she at least knows that her daughters are here with her to celebrate, and she’s here too. And that’s more than enough for her.

“I really hope this is a good year.” She knocks twice on her computer desk. “I just want a good year.”

An asterisk indicates a name has been changed to protect privacy.