Pubdate: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON) Copyright: 2004, Canoe Limited Partnership. Contact: http://www.canoe.com/NewsStand/TorontoSun/home.html Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457 Author: Mark Bonokoski Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy) DEADLY INACTION It wasn't so much what a drunked-up John Bernandino did -- which was casually "pop" an Ecstasy pill into Nicole Malik's mouth as if he were the candyman -- but it was what he didn't do that sent him off to prison yesterday. What the manager of the now-defunct Alpha Lounge internet cafe didn't do was allow an ambulance to be called when the pretty 17-year-old honours student burning midnight oil in his establishment suddenly keeled over and began to convulse from what was clearly a drug overdose. Instead, he sat back for hours and allowed Nicole Malik to slowly die on a corner couch -- telling everyone mingling around that Bloor St. W. cafe that he had seen such convulsions before, and that all would end up well. No ambulance, no cops, no problem. There could have been two men in the prisoner's dock yesterday but co-accused Paul Busch, the 19-year-old Alpha Lounge employee who had been Malik's "boyfriend" for a week, became a Crown witness at Bernandino's preliminary hearing in exchange for dropping the charge of criminal negligence causing death that was also levelled against him. But it was Busch who gave Nicole Malik the second hit of Ecstasy, paying Bernandino $20 for another blue Superman-crested pill from the 100-tablet stash he dished out like candy, and thereby leaving the answer to the next question forensically inconclusive: Which pill killed her? After Bernandino pleaded guilty yesterday to criminal negligence causing death in an agreed-upon scenario that would see him off to a reformatory for two years less a day, and manslaughter charges dropped, Crown prosecutor Calvin Barry read excerpts from victim impact statements written by members of Nicole Malik's family -- particularly two aunts who eventually raised Nicole when her natural mother, Donna Malik, gave her up to her aging grandparents 13 years ago after plunging into substance abuse. As one of her uncles told me back in November, "I often wonder if Nicole tried those drugs (at the Alpha Lounge) to see what was so special about them that a mother would choose them over her four-year-old child." That quote came on the eve of Donna Malik's funeral, a few days after the 43-year-old woman was found dead in her bed in her west-end apartment -- the victim of what police determined at the time was an apparent overdose. Today, the estranged mother and the ashes of her daughter lie buried together at Assumption Cemetery. Yesterday, as Superior Court Judge David Watt listened on, the prosecution read out the expressions of loss that Nicole's two aunts had put to paper. "Nik didn't like to see homeless people on the street," wrote Roma Toffan, Nicole's legal guardian at the time she left their home in Oro Station to visit friends in Toronto ... left to never return. "She wanted to bring them home to warm them up and, while they were having a bath, I could make them some homemade soup. Nik said, 'They're down on their luck, and need someone to give them another chance.' "She thought that someone could be her." Another aunt, Kim Tietz, who cared for Nicole between the ages of seven and 15, wrote of "slumber parties and fundraiser weekends ... of buying her first training bra ... of the Easters and Christmases" and of telling young Nicole that her mother's 'addiction' was not because of her." It was written at the time of Nicole Malik's death that the Ecstasy she took at the Alpha Lounge cafe was likely the first time she had ever experimented with drugs. And there is no evidence to suggest the contrary. "Nicole knew how drugs could destroy a family," her aunt Roma had said. "And she wasn't interested." In sentencing Bernandino, Justice Watt began by calling him a "30-year-old drug trafficker." It was an apt description. John Bernandino arrived at the internet cafe around 2 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 1, 2001, responding to a call from one of his employees that the rave drug, Ecstasy, would not be turned away if it presented itself. As the Crown described, he arrived "grossly impaired" and began dishing out the pills, asking Nicole Malik to "open her mouth" so he could "pop" one in. "It was his drinking which contributed greatly to his tragic decision-making," said Bruce Olmsted, Bernandino's defence counsel. "It's a sad situation all around." John Bernandino came to Canada from the Philippines when he was four. He has a college diploma , has always had a job, and -- until now -- had absolutely no criminal record. Nicole Malik began convulsing around 6 a.m. It lasted 15 minutes, and then she slipped in and out of consciousness. At Bernandino's insistence, no ambulance was called, and no one was called until 11 a.m. By then, Nicole Malik was already dead. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin