Man who beheaded fellow bus passenger wants to live on his own

[Wendell]

WINNIPEG — A man who beheaded a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba has changed his name and wants to leave his group home to live independently. Vince Li appeared before a Criminal Code Review Board on Monday under the new name of Will Baker. Baker killed Tim McLean during a bus trip on the TransCanada Highway near Portage la Prairie in July 2008. He was found to be not criminally responsible for the murder due to mental illness — schizophrenia. Baker was originally kept in a secure wing at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre, but the board has granted him increasing freedoms starting with supervised walks on the hospital grounds and eventually escorted trips to nearby communities. He won the right to live in a group home last year. His medical team is now asking the review board to let Baker live on his own.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1344075-man-who-beheaded-fellow-bus-passenger-wants-to-live-on-his-own (http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1344075-man-who-beheaded-fellow-bus-passenger-wants-to-live-on-his-own)

[RJ]

Canadians.

/thread











Sorry. Kidding (sort of. I married one. :cool:.) There is a lot of strange thinking going on there north of the border.

[Lon]

It's not just Canada. In '99 I responded to a call at a local mental health facility. A patient had assaulted a person in the facility. When I arrived they told me he was in the parking lot. I went to look for him and when he saw me he tried to run me down with his car. He missed and the chase was on. When we caught up to him he fought with us when we went to take him into custody. The charged him with felonious assault and locked his ass in jail with a high bond. A few months later at roll call I heard his name in reference to a call in my apartment complex. I was surprised he was out. Come to find out, they found him not guilty by reason of insanity and released him from jail. And they gave him his car back. For the first few weeks they made him live with his sister. She got tired of dealing with him so his probation officer found him an apartment. In my apartment complex 100 yards away from my apartment. I was not a happy camper and went off on his PO. They got him moved.

[JV_]

The de-institutionalization of our severely mentally ill has been going on for a while now.

[Wobblie]

[QUOTE=JV_;411744]The de-institutionalization of our severely mentally ill has been going on for a while now.[/QUOTE

Accounts for the primary results I guess.

[Vinh]

The de-institutionalization of our severely mentally ill has been going on for a while now.
That's because most of them are just straight criminals without mental illness. First-hand experience dealing with patients in a mental health institution.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[SLG]

The de-institutionalization of our severely mentally ill has been going on for a while now.

How else would we get people to be in politics? No sane person would.

Now, if we could just get them to cut each other's heads off instead of ours...;-)

[JV_]

That's because most of them are just straight criminals without mental illness.What's the difference between a "straight criminal" and a sociopath?

[Hambo]

WINNIPEG — A man who beheaded a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba has changed his name and wants to leave his group home to live independently. Vince Li appeared before a Criminal Code Review Board on Monday under the new name of Will Baker. Baker killed Tim McLean during a bus trip on the TransCanada Highway near Portage la Prairie in July 2008. He was found to be not criminally responsible for the murder due to mental illness — schizophrenia. Baker was originally kept in a secure wing at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre, but the board has granted him increasing freedoms starting with supervised walks on the hospital grounds and eventually escorted trips to nearby communities. He won the right to live in a group home last year. His medical team is now asking the review board to let Baker live on his own.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1344075-man-who-beheaded-fellow-bus-passenger-wants-to-live-on-his-own (http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1344075-man-who-beheaded-fellow-bus-passenger-wants-to-live-on-his-own)

All well and good until one he morning says, "Fuck it, I don't need these pills." The Canadians need to look south and see what de-institutionalization has done for us.

[voodoo_man]

That's because most of them are just straight criminals without mental illness. First-hand experience dealing with patients in a mental health institution.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ill second this.

There are a lot of mentally ill people out there, but many are just acting the part to get out of punishment when caught.

[Wendell]

I don't know if you all saw this, from two years ago:

Six years after Vince Li beheaded a Greyhound passenger, another death: Mountie at the scene commits suicide (http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/six-years-after-vince-li-beheaded-a-greyhound-passenger-another-death-mountie-at-the-scene-commits-suicide)
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/six-years-after-vince-li-beheaded-a-greyhound-passenger-another-death-mountie-at-the-scene-commits-suicide


One of the Mounties who responded to the 2008 Manitoba bus beheading committed suicide on the weekend after years of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ken Cpl. Barker was found dead in the basement of his Manitoba home. He had recently retired and was estranged from his wife Shari, whom he met in high school. Cpl. Barker was a Mountie for 27 years, except for a brief stint with the Winnipeg Fire Department. For the latter part of his career he was a dog handler, working with Axa, a Czech Republic-born German shepherd. “I love my job. I can’t foresee getting out of it any time soon,” he told a community news reporter in 2004. “This partnership, well, it’s very special to me.” On the night of July 30, 2008, Cpl. Barker and Axa were among those called to the Trans Canada highway near Portage La Prairie after reports of a stabbing on a Greyhound bus. They found Vince Li, a paranoid schizophrenic, who had decapitated his seatmate, Tim McLean, then cannibalized his body. For four hours, the officers maintained a cordon as Li paced back and forth inside the bus.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/six-years-after-vince-li-beheaded-a-greyhound-passenger-another-death-mountie-at-the-scene-commits-suicide

[45dotACP]

Ill second this.

There are a lot of mentally ill people out there, but many are just acting the part to get out of punishment when caught.
Treated more than my fair share of "heart attacks" or "seizures" that magically sprung forth from individuals with no medical history, but an extensive criminal one. Most of them also claim some sort of mental illness as well.

[Peally]

Behead him (eye for an eye and everything), throw the body in a dumpster, throw the head in a box on the street, and label the box with a sharpie: "House"

Problem solves, minimum amount of money wasted, everyone's happy, world is a better place. I'll take my check in the mail.

The fact that a guy that beheaded an innocent and cannibalized the body is allowed to exist among the living is a crime against humanity, plain and simple.

[Josh Runkle]

Mental illness is certainly sad for all involved, and in some cases, people truly can't be held accountable for the voices in their head. They can and should, however, be held accountable for medical compliance. If they're already taking a medication and they choose to stop taking the medication, they should be held guilty for the original crime, in my opinion. Because the court, under a doctor's recommendation has decided that the person is capable of taking their medications on their own and then behaving while under the influence of the medication. Stopping the medication is usually a choice, and one that rarely has any accountability behind it.

[JV_]

If they're already taking a medication and they choose to stop taking the medication, they should be held guilty for the original crime, in my opinion.

Much of your post seems to imply that the medication makes you whole, that doesn't mesh with my experience. Someone who's whole would not stop taking their medications if they know/understand the past. Sometimes the side effects of these drugs is really worse than the original issue. I know someone who stopped taking their bi-polar medication because it made them have unbearable suicidal thoughts. IMO, that's a good reason to stop taking the drug.

[Josh Runkle]

Much of your post seems to imply that the medication makes you whole, that doesn't mesh with my experience. Someone who's whole would not stop taking their medications if they know/understand the past. Sometimes the side effects of these drugs is really worse than the original issue. I know someone who stopped taking their bi-polar medication because it made them have unbearable suicidal thoughts. IMO, that's a good reason to stop taking the drug.

My brother in law has severe bi-polar disorder. I am also a paramedic, and deal with patients who quit taking medications.

I agree: IT IS NOT AS SIMPLE as I am making it...my point is that psychiatry and the court system have tried to imply that it is that simple, so that people don't spend their lives locked up in an insane asylum. So: if the court's standard, based on pre-existing case law is that it is as simple as medication compliance = a controlled individual, and they leave the standard that the person with the illness is mentally competent to comply with taking their medication (which we both know to be false, but the court does not seem to grasp), then there should be a penalty for stopping compliance with medical intervention. That consequence should be the person's removal from society. Hopefully, this will eventually end with a middle ground, where the court recognizes that some individuals need to be locked away forever and monitored 24/7, and that others need sporadic intervention, and yet others are simply criminals who need to serve a sentence.

[TAZ]

Mental illness is certainly sad for all involved, and in some cases, people truly can't be held accountable for the voices in their head.


I seriously disagree with this statement. Not the sad part, but the latter. We most certainly can and should hold all people accountable for their actions. We just choose not to do so for some I know reason. If you kill someone because you can't tell right from wrong then you have no business continuing to breathe. Whether you're sane or crazy is beside the point.

[Trooper224]

One of the problems with mental illness is that we turn it into an emotional issue. We feel sorry for those affected and really don't want to live with the decision to permanently confine them. Yes, there were problems with state run mental institutions, but we threw the baby out with the bath water by closing them all down. In the end, the welfare of society at large needs to trump the rights of the individual, when that subject has been determined to pose a risk to everyone else. A large percentage of them should be permanently locked up, so productive members of society can lead productive lives. It's not fair, it's reality. Everyone simply doesn't get dealt the same hand in life.