On 30 July 2008, Tim McLean, a 22-year-old Canadian man, was stabbed, beheaded, and cannibalized while riding a Greyhound Canada bus along the Trans-Canada Highway, about 30 km (19 mi) west of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. On 5 March 2009, his killer, 40-year-old Vincent Weiguang Li (Chinese: 李伟光; pinyin: Lǐ Wěiguāng), was found not criminally responsible for murder after it was determined that he was schizophrenic and remanded to a high-security mental health facility in Selkirk, Manitoba, where he was detained until his release on 8 May 2015.
Incident
On 30 July 2008, Tim
McLean, a carnival barker, was returning home to Winnipeg after working at
a fair in Edmonton. He departed Edmonton on board Greyhound bus 1170 to Winnipeg, via the Yellowhead Highway through
Saskatchewan. He sat at the rear, one row ahead of the toilet. At 6:55 p.m.,
the bus departed from a stop in Erickson, Manitoba, with a new passenger, Vince Li. Li, described as a tall man
in his 40s, with a shaved head and sunglasses, originally sat near the front of
the bus, but moved to sit next to McLean following a scheduled rest stop in
Brandon. McLean "barely
acknowledged" Li, then fell asleep against the window pane, headphones
covering his ears.
According to witnesses, McLean was sleeping with his
headphones on when the man sitting next to him suddenly produced a large knife
and began stabbing him in the neck and chest. After the attack began, the bus
driver pulled to the side of the road, and he and all the other passengers fled
the vehicle. The driver and two other men made an attempt to rescue McLean but
were chased away by Li, who slashed at them from behind the locked bus doors.
Li ultimately decapitated McLean and displayed his severed head to those
standing outside the bus through a window, then returned to McLean's body and
began severing other parts and consuming some of McLean's flesh.
At 8:30 p.m., the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Portage la Prairie received a report of a
stabbing on a Greyhound bus west of the city. They arrived to find the suspect
still on board the bus, being prevented from escaping by another passenger, the
bus driver, and a truck driver who had provided a crowbar and a hammer as
weapons. The other passengers were huddled at the roadside, some of them crying
and vomiting. As the suspect had earlier attempted to escape by driving the bus
away, the driver had engaged the emergency immobilizer system, rendering the
vehicle inoperable. Witnesses had observed the suspect stabbing and cutting
McLean's body with a knife, and carrying McLean's severed head.
By 9:00 p.m., police were in a standoff with the suspect and
had summoned special negotiators and a heavily armed tactical unit. The suspect
alternately paced the length of the bus and defiled the corpse. Police officers
then observed Li eating parts of the body. Meanwhile, the stranded passengers
were transported from the scene to be interviewed at the Brandon RCMP
detachment. RCMP officers reportedly heard Li say, "I have to stay on the bus forever."
On July 31, 2008, at 1:30 a.m., the suspect attempted to
escape from the bus by breaking through a window. The RCMP arrested Li soon
afterward. He was shot twice with a Taser,
handcuffed, and placed in the back of a police cruiser. Parts of the
victim's body, placed in plastic bags, were retrieved from the bus, while his
ear, nose, and tongue were found in Li's pockets. The victim's eyes and a part
of his heart were never recovered and, despite his vehement denial, are
presumed to have been eaten by Li.
At 10:00 a.m., Greyhound representatives took the other
passengers to a local store to replace their clothes, which remained on the
bus. They arrived in Winnipeg at 3:30 p.m. that day, to be reunited with family
members and friends.
Tim McLean
Timothy Richard
McLean Jr. was born on October 3, 1985, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He grew up both
in Winnipeg and in Elie, Manitoba. He was 22 years old at the time of his
death and had been working as a carnival worker, specifically a carnival
barker in Edmonton, Alberta. On December 21, 2008, five months after McLean's
death, his son was born.
Vince Li
Background
Vincent Weiguang Li
(Chinese: 李伟光; pinyin: Lǐ
Wěiguāng) was born in Dandong, Liaoning, on April 30, 1968. In 1992, Li
graduated from the Wuhan Institute of
Technology with a bachelor's degree in computing. From 1994 to 1998, Li
worked in Beijing as a computer software engineer. Li immigrated to Canada on
June 11, 2001 (though some newspapers mistakenly reported 2004), and became a
Canadian citizen on November 7, 2006.
Starting in the fall of 2004, he worked in Winnipeg at
menial jobs at Grant Memorial Church
for six months to support his wife, Anna. Pastor
Tom Castor, who employed Li, said he seemed happy to have a job and was
committed to doing it well, despite a language barrier with other congregation
members.
"I think he would
occasionally feel frustrated with not being able to communicate or
understand," Castor told CTV Winnipeg. "But we have very patient staff members and he seemed to respond
well." Castor also said Li did not show any signs of anger issues or
any other trouble before he quit in the spring of 2005. He began working as a
forklift operator in Winnipeg that same year's summer while his wife worked as
a waitress.
According to Stanley
Yaren, his court psychiatrist, Li told him that he had converted to Christianity
and was baptized during his employment at Grant
Memorial Church after he heard the "voice
of God" talking to him. Li said that the voice called him the "third story of the Bible", as
well as the "second coming of
Jesus", destined to save people from an alien invasion. In
preparation, the voice would regularly order Li to travel through the country
on foot or by bus, often disappearing from his home for days on end, as
corroborated by his wife. Due to his paranoid belief that he was constantly
under threat by alien infiltrators, Li began carrying a buck knife on his
person for protection; he would ultimately use it to kill McLean. These
delusions would later be ascribed to undiagnosed schizophrenia. Li had
previously been examined at William
Osler Health Center following an incident in 2005, when he was found
wandering a highway to Winnipeg by Ontario
Provincial Police and stated that he was "following the sun" at the command of God. Despite some
local newspapers reporting that Li was diagnosed with schizophrenia by staff
there and refused medication, official records show that Li was never
documented for mental illness, though it was noted at Li's trial that his
maternal uncle suffered from an unspecified psychiatric disorder.
Li first moved to Edmonton in 2006, abruptly leaving his
wife alone in Winnipeg until she joined him later. His jobs included work as a
janitor, mechanic, and cashier at a Wal-Mart,
service at a McDonald's restaurant,
and newspaper delivery. His delivery boss, Vincent
Augert, described Li as reliable, hard-working, and not showing any signs of
trouble.
Four weeks before the killing, Li was fired from Wal-Mart following a disagreement with
another employee. Shortly before the incident, he asked for time off from his
delivery job to go to Winnipeg for a job interview.
July 29, 2008
At 12:05 p.m. on July 28 in Edmonton, Li boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg. On
July 29, around 6 p.m., Li got off the bus in Erickson, Manitoba, with at least
three pieces of luggage, and stayed the night on a bench next to a grocery
store. According to one witness, he was seen at 3 a.m. sitting "bolt upright" with eyes wide
open. On the morning of July 30, still at the bench, he sold his new laptop computer
to a 15-year-old boy for $60. The laptop was seized by the RCMP as evidence;
the boy was subsequently given a new laptop by an anonymous businessman.
Witness Garnet Caton
said the attacker seemed oblivious to others when the stabbing occurred, adding
he was struck by Li's calm demeanor. "There
was no rage or anything. He was like a robot, stabbing the guy," he
said. When he appeared in a Portage la Prairie courthouse on charges of
second-degree murder, the only words Li reportedly uttered were "Please kill me".
Trial
Li's trial commenced on March 3, 2009, with Li pleading not
criminally responsible on account of mental disorder. This means he accepted
that the offense occurred but claimed that he was unable to form the necessary
mental element or mens rea. Stanley
Yaren said that his patient's schizophrenia rendered him inculpable, as he
had been under the false belief that McLean was a "force of evil" and posed an imminent threat to himself
and others. In Li's mind, McLean was really a demon in disguise and an alien
who needed to be "destroyed",
to the point where he felt it was necessary to mutilate McLean's body to
prevent him from coming back to life. Li had also felt pressured to perform the
attack by voices he believed were from God, telling him to kill McLean sitting
beside him, or he would be killed himself. Both the defense and the prosecution
were in agreement with Yaren's assessment and spoke in favor of involuntary
commitment to a mental institution rather than prison time. The presiding
judge, John Scurfield, accepted the
diagnosis and ruled that Li was not criminally responsible for the killing. Li
was remanded to the Selkirk Mental
Health Center.
Aftermath
The week following the attack, Greyhound Canada announced it was pulling a series of nationwide
advertisements that included the slogan, "There's
a reason you've never heard of bus rage." The incident has led to
numerous calls and petitions demanding increased security on intercity buses.
The family of Tim
McLean has brought a lawsuit of $150,000 against Greyhound, the Attorney General of Canada, and Vince Li.
On June 3, 2010, Li was granted supervised outdoor walks
within his mental health facility as voted by the provincial review board.
On February 16, 2011, two passengers, Debra Tucker and Kayli Shaw,
filed a lawsuit against Li, Greyhound, the RCMP, and the Canadian government
for being exposed to the beheading. They were each seeking $3 million in
damages. On July 14, 2015, the two women dropped their lawsuit.
On May 30, 2011, CBC reported that Li was responding well to
his psychiatric treatment and that his doctor had recommended that he receive
more freedoms, phased in over several months.
On May 17, 2012, the National
Post reported that Li had been granted temporary passes that would allow
him out of the Selkirk Mental Health
Center for visits to the town of Selkirk, supervised by a nurse and peace
officer. In an interview with Chris
Summerville of The Schizophrenia
Society of Canada, Li spoke publicly for the first time, sharing that his
condition is slowly improving. He is being prescribed Olanzapine and is learning about schizophrenia, as well as ways
to cope with it healthily. Li affirmed his guilt, saying he "can never forget the Greyhound
bus" and that he believes that he can never be happy again,
acknowledging that McLean's family likely won't forgive him. When asked for
parting words, Li offered an apology to McLean's mother, stating "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."
On February 27, 2014, CBC reported that on March 6, Li would
be allowed to have unsupervised visits to Selkirk, starting at 30 minutes and
expanding to full-day trips. Since 2013, he has been allowed to have supervised
visits to Lockport, Winnipeg, and nearby beaches. Those visits were then
relaxed.
On July 17, 2014, the Toronto
Sun reported that one of the first officers on the scene, Corporal Ken Barker of the RCMP, had
committed suicide. The family stated in his obituary that he suffered from post-traumatic
stress disorder.
On February 27, 2015, CBC
News reported that Li was given unsupervised day passes to visit Winnipeg
so long as he carried a functioning cellular telephone while using them.
On May 8, 2015, CTV
News reported that Li would be granted passes to group homes in the
community.
In February 2016, it was reported that Li had legally
changed his name to Will Lee Baker
and was seeking to leave his group home to live independently. He won the right
to live alone on February 26 upon the recommendation of the Criminal Code Review Board.
On February 10, 2017, the Manitoba Criminal Code Review
Board ordered Li to be discharged. Li was granted an absolute discharge. There
will be no legal obligations or restrictions on Li's independent
living.
Further reading
Vincent (Cider
Press, 2015), a book-length poem by American poet Joseph Fasano, is a fictionalized work based loosely on the event.
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