No new freedoms for Li: rally

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/05/2015 (3815 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

About 50 people gathered on the steps of the legislature Saturday afternoon to protest Vincent Li being granted the freedom to be transferred to a group home in the city.

A recent decision by the Criminal Code Review Board to grant greater liberties to Li — found not criminally responsible for the murder and mutilation of a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in 2008 — has triggered an emotionally charged debate about what to do with mentally ill people who commit acts of violence.

Li, who has schizophrenia, beheaded Winnipegger Tim McLean, 22, during a violent psychotic break on a Greyhound Bus.

This February, the board granted Li unsupervised day passes to Winnipeg. The board also said it might someday consider allowing Li to live in a group home. Li has been under supervision at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre for the past six years.

Several people at the gathering said they knew McLean, who was on his way home from working a carnival in Edmonton at the time of the attack.

His mother, Carol de Delley, joined the rally after it started and thanked the organizers with the lobby group Justice for Tim McLean for staging it.

She urged the mental-health and justice systems to reverse their decision and keep Li in custody.

“I will say it’s been a pretty long road… I was out here 61/2 years ago saying the same thing I’m saying today. I don’t think that an individual like Vince Li belongs out in our society free, with no criminal record. I don’t think the system is any more prepared to deal with an individual as ill as Vince Li than it was six years ago,” de Delley said to applause.

Several in the crowd said they are concerned Li may commit another act of violence.

Chris Summerville, the executive director of the Manitoba Schizophrenia Society, knows Li.

“Vince Li is unlikely to reoffend at all,” Summerville said in an email. “His history at SMHC was near perfect in terms of his co-operation, compliancy and getting along with staff and others.

“His response to medication is 100 per cent, with no presence of psychosis.”

Summerville went on to say he believed the risk to the public is very low.

“His discharge is conditional with requirements he has to meet to stay in the community. Research is on his side. Those with a history of violent crimes who go through the forensic system have a reoffending rate of one per cent.” Summerville said.

Li will have a number of support services stipulated in any conditional discharge, including regular meetings with his doctor and mental-health worker, and group sessions at the Manitoba Schizophrenia Society, Summerville said.

“I trust him with my presence and would have him in my home,” he said.

McLean’s mother and her supporters said they’re not reassured because, in the end, Li is responsible for continuing to take his medication.

“The fact that that decision is left to him, that ought to terrify everybody. I don’t know why it doesn’t. I don’t know why everybody isn’t up in arms, saying, ‘Wait a minute. We don’t have a legal mechanism requiring him to take that medication,’ ” de Delley told reporters.

Her views are part of 36-minute YouTube presentation to a Canadian Senate committee that reviewed the designation of not criminally responsible.

Justice for Tim McLean is a lobby group organized by Ginny Kirk, who knew McLean from his time working at the Red River Exhibition. Kirk said she’s written to Premier Greg Selinger, the provincial justice minister and the review board asking them to reverse the decision to grant Li additional freedoms.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca