Victim advocates have long sought reform of the system handling offenders deemed not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder
Rebecca Mayrhofer said she felt “100 per cent frustrated” when she heard about a triple stabbing in Vancouver’s Chinatown on the weekend, that police allege was committed by a man on day release from psychiatric detention.Blair Evan Donnelly, 64, had previously been found not criminally responsible for stabbing his teenage daughter to death in 2006 and was sent to B.C.’s Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam.
Like Donnelly, Barter would be re-arrested. He was charged with assault and assault with a weapon in 2022. Those charges were stayed this year, and he remains in the community because of an absolute discharge by the review board in 2019.Rebecca Mayrhofer and other victim advocates have long sought reform of the system handling offenders deemed not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder. She said the “system is broken” and it “desperately needs a change.
“One-off situations quite tragic, but they are not the norm,” she said. “They are not common, they are not frequent. They are not typical, they are not to be expected.” In Donnelly’s case, the board ruled in April that he remained a “significant” threat to public safety. He had stabbed a friend while on previous day release in 2009 after a cocaine binge, then in 2017 he attacked a fellow detainee at the Coquitlam hospital with a butter knife shortly after returning from another day pass, a board decision said.
Donnelly has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault after Sunday’s attack at the Light Up Chinatown! festival, which left three people with severe wounds. But longtime defence lawyer and former prosecutor Juan O’Quinn said the premier, as former executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and attorney general, should better understand how the process works.
“This is not something that happens every month or two, but when it does happen in such an extravagant fashion, as terrible as it is, it garners a lot of attention.” But Barter was entitled to representation and “the opportunity to take advantage of the legislation that was there.”The mother of Tim McLean – who was killed and cannibalized on a Greyhound bus in 2008 by Vince Li, who was found not criminally responsible – spent years calling for reforms to a system she said provided “minimal assurances that the criminal behaviour will not be repeated.”
Mayrhofer said she had been writing to different levels of government, advocating for permanent monitoring and psychiatric supervision to ensure such offenders take prescribed medication.
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