Innocent/Guilty

Absolutely, unthinkably hideous.  A lively young man of 24 taking a bus as a routine event, heading back home from a temporary summertime job as a carnival worker.  Fortune was not with that young man.  His name was Tim McLean. 

And his friends and his family mourn him.  When we speak of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time, there are many examples that old adage would fit.  Tim McLean's passage on that Greyhound bus near Portage La Prairie, Manitoba in 2008 qualifies in large measure, in blazing highlights, in fact.

His was a totally unexpected, absolutely gruesome end. 

His murderer, Vince Li, was found not guilty of decapitating and cannibalizing Tim McLean.  Horrified bus passengers, desperately rushing off the bus watched, mesmerized and disgusted, as Mr. Li went about his grisly carnage.  The bus was locked from the interior and when RCMP police arrived there was a standoff.  Mr. Li was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.

His dreadful act of murder was considered to be the result of a psychotic outbreak occasioned by Mr. Li's undiagnosed condition of schizophrenia.  Mr. Li has been treated at the Selkirk Mental Health Hospital for the criminally insane.  He takes medication and his progress is monitored by staff psychiatrists.  Who now deem him to be well balanced and able to stroll the grounds of the Selkirk Centre safely, in the company of hospital personnel.

He hopes eventually to be able to leave the facility.  He now accepts that he has a mental illness that requires ongoing treatment.  He recently submitted to an interview that took 45 minutes in total at the forensics unit of the Selkirk Centre in Manitoba.  His interlocutor was Chris Summerville, CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada.

"In 2004, I didn't know what it was.  I now know what it is.  I began to hear voices that normal people do not hear.  I thought I head the voice of God telling me to write down my journey.  The voice told me that I was the third story of the bible.  That I was like the second coming of Jesus.  I was to save people from a space-alien attack.  that is why I travelled around the country.  I am not sure of all the places I went to.  I now know that it was schizophrenia I was suffering from", he explained.

"I bought a knife at Canadian Tire.  I bought it for any emergency for the journey to protect myself from the aliens.  I was really scared...  I believed he was an alien.  The voices told me to kill him.  That he would kill me or others.  I do not believe this now.  It was totally wrong.  It was my fault.  I sinned.  But it was the schizophrenia."

When asked do you remember what had occurred, he responded that he clearly remembered what had happened.  "I try to forget it.  I try to stay busy here.  It is painful to think about.  I feel nervous.  I feel painful.  I am embarrassed.  It was wrong."  "My thinking is becoming normal.  I don't think weird things.  I take my medication, Olanzapine, every day.  I am glad to take it.  I don't have any weird voices anymore."

"I understand people are scared because of my behaviour on the Greyhound bus.  I am not at risk for anybody.  I don't believe in aliens.  I don't hear voices.  I would call my doctor if I heard voices again.  Yes, I understand their fear."  "I should have been killed at that time.  I still believe that.  But I am thankful that the RCMP didn't."

"I would like to say to Tim McLean's mother 'I am sorry for killing your son.  I am sorry for the pain I have caused.  I wished I could reduce that pain'."

Is the public prepared to have this man released, as he hopes eventually he will be, to take his place in society again?  He thinks he should be, eventually.  The mother of the man he murdered has worked tirelessly to see the passage of "Tim's Law": it holds that any mentally insane person who kills someone would not ever be released from custody.

"I don't think so, that that should happen.  Mental illness is an illness.  It is treatable.  My schizophrenia is not the real me, but it is an illness."  He would know, he said firmly, if he were to become ill again, and he would know because he would be "Hearing voices, stopping my medication and starting to believe in aliens.  God would not tell me to do something bad", he said. 

But then, back in 2008 he believed that God was telling him how to respond to a perceived threat that so obviously terrified him, that he calmly slit a living man's throat, ferociously kept at it until he had succeeded in removing head from neck, then proceeded to consume parts of the still-warm flesh.  Conscious of what he was doing, because he is capable of clearly recollecting it.

He can never be happy, he said also.  "No.  I can never forget the Greyhound bus."