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Li may get passes to visit Selkirk community
Vince Li appears in a Portage La Prairie, Man. court Tuesday, August 5, 2008. (JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
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Vince Li may only be a few days away from being allowed temporary passes off the grounds of the Selkirk Mental Health Centre and into the community.
Li, found not criminally responsible for a horrific 2008 killing, appeared in court Monday afternoon for his annual review board hearing.
His treatment team made two major recommendations, neither of which were opposed by the Crown. The review board will give a written decision later this week.
The first proposal involves giving Li extended privileges within the facility based on the rapid progress he is making while receiving medical care. Li has been allowed passes out of his locked forensic unit to walk on hospital grounds since last summer, provided he is given direct supervision by a peace officer.
Now doctors are saying he is doing so well he should be allowed general supervision like any other patient at the hospital.
The second proposal involves allowing Li to take 30 minute excursions into the city of Selkirk, provided he is accompanied at all times by a peace officer and a nurse. His doctors say those passes can be extended by up to 15 minutes per week, provided there are no incidents and he continues to make great strides.
Li is being held in Selkirk after for the dismemberment slaying of 22-year-old Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus near Portage la Prairie. A judge ruled Li was suffering from hallucinations and untreated schizophrenia at the time of the unprovoked attack.
His treating psychiatrist, Dr. Steven Kremer, told the review board Monday that Li is currently on medication and experiencing no symptoms or hallucinations. He has been diagnosed as having a 0.8 per cent chance of violently re-offending in the next seven years, according to risk assessments done on him.
"The privileges being asked for...would not place the public at high risk," Kremer told the board. "He has done very well. He has been a robust responder. He understands if he were not to take his medication he would experience a deterioration."
Kremer and another psychiatrist described Li as a model patient who has had no incidents staff or other patients and has shown great insight into what he’s done. Li has improved his English and taken several occupational therapy programs including job training and meal preparation.
Crown attorney Susan Helenchilde said she had no grounds to oppose the recommendations. But McLean’s family took a much different view outside the courtroom.
McLean's mother, Carol de Delley, said it now seems inevitable that Li will regain his full freedom in the near future. She called it "ironic and ridiculous" that the mental health system which failed to properly protect society from Li is now recommending he slowly be re-integrated into society.
"Letting him go puts the rest of the public at risk," she said. De Delley has long called for mentally ill killers such as Li to be held indefinitely in a hospital, regardless of any progress they may show.
Li, 44, emigrated from China in 2001 and worked menial jobs in Winnipeg. He moved to Edmonton in 2006 and was on his way back to Winnipeg when he killed McLean.
Li's trial was told he was an untreated schizophrenic who heard voices telling him to kill McLean, a young carnival worker whom Li had never met before. Passengers said Li started stabbing McLean. After the driver stopped the bus and the passengers exited, Li decapitated McLean and ate pieces of his flesh.
www.mikeoncrime.com
With files from The Canadian Press
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