Discussions

I'm not going to opine about whether is freedom is right or wrong. But those of you complaining he'll be living on our tax dollars - where do you think the money comes from to house prisoners? The magic jail money tree?

Brenda said " Crownboy - you obviously know nothing of mental illness.       I would suggest that anyone posting their opinions read first about schizophrenia. A good site is the Mayo Clinic.       I also suffer mental illness, I agree what Li did was horrid, but knowing facts of this illness may help you understand. This case will obviously not change the justice system.     I truly believe Tim's mother deserves to be full of hate. But their comes a point where perhaps her focus should be doing something good in Tim's name. Perhaps a hockey tournament, ball tournament, golf - with proceeds going to Mental Health. The poor woman has expended so much energy on trying to beat the justice system, maybe something like this would help to remember the good times with Tim. I do not expect her to ever forget what happened, but maybe trying something positive will help.     Edited by Brenda, 2017-02-10 18:51:13 Edited by admin, 2017-02-10 19:32:08. Reason: Reference to since removed post"

I know all I need to know about mental illness. What I do know is this cannibal should never have been allowed freedom so soon.

With China being a communist country, do you actually think they will allow Li back into their country???

I hate to say it but the rcmp should have shot him while he was still on the bus. I think he poses a great risk to the safety of others. There must be some degree of mental illness in a lot of serial murders, child rapists, etc and other people who commit horrific crimes. Where do we draw the line? Can anyone who commits a horrendous crime cry insanity due to mental health and get a free pass?? My belief is you do the crime you do the time regardless of your situation. There were multiple victims in the murder of Tim McLean. All those passengers affected with PTSD and the officer who lost his battle with PTSD and commited suicide. And the man responsible for it all gets the same privileges as us upstanding citizens!

Deport him.

You all have to remember, he is CANADIAN. He is a CITIZEN. He will not be "deported" to China because he is a CANADIAN CITIZEN. he is OURS, we have to deal with him, for better or worse. You cannot be deported to a country that is not yours, so please stop talking like that's an option.

He should be stripped of his canadian citizenship and sent back to the country he was born in and spent most of his life in. I don't care if it's unconstitutional.

Jym said "I hate to say it but the rcmp should have shot him while he was still on the bus. I think he poses a great risk to the safety of others. There must be some degree of mental illness in a lot of serial murders, child rapists, etc and other people who commit horrific crimes. Where do we draw the line? Can anyone who commits a horrendous crime cry insanity due to mental health and get a free pass?? My belief is you do the crime you do the time regardless of your situation. There were multiple victims in the murder of Tim McLean. All those passengers affected with PTSD and the officer who lost his battle with PTSD and commited suicide. And the man responsible for it all gets the same privileges as us upstanding citizens! "

what should we do with all the soldiers that fought a war and have come back with PTSD, and very hard to find help? If they commit suicide, whose fault is that. Remember they signed up to be soldiers, to fight a war, to peacekeep.

The passengers on the bus did not sign up to have some monster behead/dismember/cannibalize someone on there bus. I also believe our military has great treatments for their PTSD, that is a different topic all together.

Please explain how the soldiers with PTSD have anything to do with this? I never once made any reference to them and not sure how the two relate? All I was pointing out was that in the Vince Li/Will Baker case there was more than one victim of his actions.  
 
Speaking of PTSD I wonder to what degree Vince Li suffers- if at all any. Does he have any recollection of the murder, beheading and cannibalism? He was able to recount why he murdered Tim - but I actually wonder if the events of that night haunt him everyday like they do the passengers, emergency responders and everyone else that was unfortunate enough to witness the crime.

then why did he not take them in the first place may i ask

I don't know the specifics of Vince Li's case as far as how severe his schizophrenia is and how likely it is to reoccur, but I grew up with a mother (now deceased) who had paranoid schizophrenia.  
 
Throughout my childhood, my mother's cycle was as follows: she would be forced into hospital, stabilized on meds, and then released. While on meds, she was a great mother, fun to be around, had friends, a job and so on. But after a couple of months, she would think she didn't need the meds anymore, go off of them, and slowly deteriorate. At that point, due to the paranoia, she always refused help, and several times became homeless. Finally, when she became a danger to herself she would forcibly taken back to the hospital. Then she would be treated, stabilized, released, and the cycle would begin again. It continued this way, with hospitalization approximately every 18 months to 2 years, until her death. This encompassed all my childhood and early adulthood, about 40 years worth of suffering for her (she was ill before she had children as well).  
 
The mental health professionals always said that she "lacked insight", which was why she thought she didn't need meds, and would eventually go off of them. My family more or less accepted her lack of insight as part of her illness.  
 
So, not saying everyone with schizophrenia is the same, of course not, but given my bitter experience with my mother, who was never violent towards anyone, I wonder how much insight Vince Li has. I hope he stays on his meds but who knows. My mother never did.

i totally agree with verstang

Jym said "Please explain how the soldiers with PTSD have anything to do with this? I never once made any reference to them and not sure how the two relate? All I was pointing out was that in the Vince Li/Will Baker case there was more than one victim of his actions.     Speaking of PTSD I wonder to what degree Vince Li suffers- if at all any. Does he have any recollection of the murder, beheading and cannibalism? He was able to recount why he murdered Tim - but I actually wonder if the events of that night haunt him everyday like they do the passengers, emergency responders and everyone else that was unfortunate enough to witness the crime. "

If I correctly recall the interview Gord Sinclair did with him in the Free Press a while back, yes, Baker/Li does recall all of the specifics and yes, those memories do haunt him.  
 
That brings me back to my original post in this thread. He KNOWS what will happen to him if he stops his meds. While on meds, he is as sane as any normal person, so if he knows what stopping them means, why would he knowingly and willingly do so?  
 
I was trying to make it easy for people with little or no knowledge about mental health issues to see things from his perspective, now that he can think rationally. Would you do something if you knew that action would turn you into a cannibalistic murderer? Of course not. Neither will Baker. As described in this thread by @Brenda, Baker was a normal, hard working person until his schizophrenia manifested itself. The person who committed the horrific murder of Tim McLean no longer exists.  
 
The whole idea of prison is to punish or rehabilitate criminals. Keeping Baker behind bars serves no purpose except to satisfy the desire for revenge on the part of McLean's family, friends and members of the public who are close-minded to the issues of mental health. There is nobody to rehabilitate. The murderer is no longer there. Although the body is the same, the consciousness that obeyed voices directing him to protect himself from the evil demons no longer exists. There is nobody to punish.  
 
When Baker/Li first came to Canada and was working in Winnipeg, was he a danger to anyone? No. That is the person who we are talking about, not the monster that was on the bus that night.

You have written the most insightful and best post on this thread. I thank you for understanding mental illness.  
 
I know for a fact, even though I now have more better days than bad days, I would never go off my medication, even with the side effects I endure.  
 
If Li decided to go off his medication the withdrawal would be so bad, that I believe he would realize he was doing the wrong thing. (although I also don't believe he will go off his medication)

JR said, "Well, that's how Baker/Li is feeling right now. The only difference is that instead of making a conscious decision to take pills, he would be making a conscious decision to stop taking pills."  
 
This is far from "the only difference"!  
 
The rest of us don't have a history of having killed and mutilated a human body!  
 
You are comparing the choice of taking a pill "to do right" vs taking a pill "to do wrong!"  
 
There are countless cases of patients who are on antipsychotic or antidepressant meds who stop taking them. They reach a point where they feel "normal" and feel they can live without their meds. Of course, the meds are the reason they feel normal. Some of these people have harmed themselves or others as a result.  
 
You are comparing the idea of a mentally healthy person making a decision to not take a pill that would cause them to have psychotic episodes with the idea of a mentally unhealthy person choosing to not take their meds. It's a ridiculous comparison.

sunzu said "If the victim's name in this case was the the name of your son/ daughter mother/sister etc. would you feel the same? Would organizing a ball tournament fundraiser for Mental Health help with the pain? It's impossible to feel what this mother is feeling but try and honestly ask yourself could you forgive or forget and not question our justice system?   What kind of counselling has this family received? All the while the murderer of her son received the best and on our dime I might add! I can hardly put into words what I feel.... "

If it was someone you loved/cared about, a father or brother, would you want to see them locked up because they suffered from a mental illness? Killed? Sent away?  
 
I don't necessarily agree he should be free and not monitored but I also don't feel he should be locked up.

He would be out of jail perhaps, if charged with 2nd degree murder.  
 
When you combine the stigma of a mental illness with the stigma of criminality, the result is immeasurably greater than the sum of its parts. We fear violence, but much more so from the unknown — troubled, unpredictable minds we may not understand.  
 
When a trial finds an accused not criminally responsible on account of medical disorder — NCRMD, or NCR for short — the offender appears to be met with lenience. High-profile cases which may incite public outrage and fear often pose the uncomfortable question: What happens when the offender is released."  
 
if you are struggling with Tim McLean's case, read this. Please. Nothing brings Tim back, nothing stops the hurt in the hearts of his loved ones, nothing stops the horror those on the bus relive, nothing stops the horror the emergency personnel faced. No sentence would relieve this or change what happened. Try to understand why NCR was the verdict and what this means. Try to understand how the system works. Say for example Vince was charged with 2nd degree murder. It wouldn't be 1st degree. He would get about 15yrs as a sentence. Serving approximately 8 of those years in custody. He may be released with Probation to follow, so he would be on conditions that would eventually expire and he would not be supervised. While in custody he would not have received much in the way of rehabilitation or counselling or mental health treatment. Arguably making him more dangerous upon release. I know the justice system frustrates many people, I truly understand that. My advice is to make waves where it will make a difference. Speak to your MP's, petition the govt, get involved in justice committees. Do something. And please, please, please educate yourself on mental illness while doing so.

This is so outrageous!!  
I am speaking solely on this guy getting his freedom.... It is so absurd!  
He was witnessed killing a man.....no disputing he did it... He did the act he is guilty.... He should spend the rest of his life in jail....  
There is sooooo many people with mental Illnesses.... Unfortunate, but you do the crime you should do the time..... There is no accountability for anyone anymore.... a sad future for our children.

first of all he had that knife with him the whole time and also why get off in Erickson when he could have ridden to Winnipeg the first time. Also he was able to perform a transaction with a kid about a laptop without killing him. Also why would you ever set someone free who committed this horrendous crime meds or not. Where's Tim Maclean's freedoms, oh yeah he doesn't have any now. He didn't just kill him cause god told him to, I think this went beyond that did god also tell him to eat him and dismember him too. Sorry I just don't agree with this decision at all.

Superdad said "first of all he had that knife with him the whole time and also why get off in Erickson when he could have ridden to Winnipeg the first time. Also he was able to perform a transaction with a kid about a laptop without killing him. Also why would you ever set someone free who committed this horrendous crime meds or not. Where's Tim Maclean's freedoms, oh yeah he doesn't have any now. He didn't just kill him cause god told him to, I think this went beyond that did god also tell him to eat him and dismember him too. Sorry I just don't agree with this decision at all. "

When he got the knife he did not plan to kill. The voices in his head told him to buy a knife. You said it yourself - he could have killed that boy in Erickson, but didn't, because the voices he hears did not tell him to. If you knew about schizophrenia, you would see how thoughts are so erratic.  
 
Now as for the laptop - mental illness does not make a person dumb. You are insinuating that everyone with mental illness is dumb. He graduated from the University of Wuhan Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science (Computers) in 1992. Mental Illness does not make you dumb!

I read about the woman with schizophrenia and she recognized that something was wrong why didn't they with Vince Li he was hospitalized around 2004 with an incident with Ontario police dept. Also I didn't say he was dumb obviously coherent, and why get off in Erickson when he knew his destination was winnipeg. Just all speculation.

from a previous post I copied from facebook, but most important in that is - if he was charged with murder (2nd degree), he would have got around a 15 year jail sentence. With time in jail awaiting trial, trial time and jail time, he could have been out in 8 years. (that would have been last year)  
 
He would not have been given the proper care, he might get a couple years probation and as jail can make people hardened criminals, he may have come out worse.  
 
(timeline's in the previous article and this post were given to me by a friend in the legal field)

It's always sad these days that the Victims are always forgotten and the Killer always has an excuse to justify his/her crime. These bleeding hearts say he will be fine as long as he takes his meds. What they don't ever say is what if it were their Son he had killed? What if he goes off his meds and kills another Son or Daughter or Mother or Father?? Do you honestly, with all your intelligence, believe this sick Individual will ever be a productive member or Society?? Would it not be best, not only for the Public, but for the Individual to be kept in a facility that can treat him/her properly? Let's quit defending these killers and start defending the families that have lost a Son, Daughter, Mother or Father as they are the real Victims and should be recognized by Society as such.

V-BallRocks said "JR said, "Well, that's how Baker/Li is feeling right now. The only difference is that instead of making a conscious decision to take pills, he would be making a conscious decision to stop taking pills."     This is far from "the only difference"!     The rest of us don't have a history of having killed and mutilated a human body!     You are comparing the choice of taking a pill "to do right" vs taking a pill "to do wrong!"     There are countless cases of patients who are on antipsychotic or antidepressant meds who stop taking them. They reach a point where they feel "normal" and feel they can live without their meds. Of course, the meds are the reason they feel normal. Some of these people have harmed themselves or others as a result.     You are comparing the idea of a mentally healthy person making a decision to not take a pill that would cause them to have psychotic episodes with the idea of a mentally unhealthy person choosing to not take their meds. It's a ridiculous comparison. "

You say in one sentence that Baker/Li has a history of having killed a mutilated a human. Yes. THAT is what will keep him on his meds. He remembers what he did. He knows that it is the medication he takes that prevents him from becoming like that again. He was normal for his whole life until he became mentally ill. He is once again normal as his medication resolves his disease. If he was someone who was taking meds to resolve a depression without history of suicide attempts, I could see him thinking that he's better and going off his meds. I know. I've been there and done that. But Baker/Li is different. He's been to the dark side, done the worst that a human being can do and has come back with full recollection. Your analysis of my comparison example is flawed in that Baker/Li is no longer mentally unhealthy. He is able to live a normal life now.  
 
Here's another comparison for you... a person who has diabetes almost dies due to the disease. They begin a regimen of medications that gets the condition under control. They now can live a normal life with the exception of taking medication. They know that they will die without the meds, but they feel so normal. Do you think such a person would stop taking their meds? I highly doubt it.  
 
And yes, mental illness of any type is a disease. It qualifies just as much as diabetes, asthma, or cancer. It is also controllable and even curable with time, care and medications, just like any other illness. Once people begin to realize this, maybe we won't have people so quick to condemn a normal man for actions he had no control over.  
 
I said it before and I'll say it again... the man that committed the atrocities on that night no longer exists. In his place is the quiet, intelligent, hard working individual who inhabited that body before his disease took hold. I'm sorry that you can't understand that.

I understand why he was released, and while its still a bit of a grey area for me...I do believe that given the circumstances, the doctors, lawyers, judges etc. Should be held criminally responsible should he reoffend. They have to take accountability for their actions in giving him the green light that he will be okay re entering society. I'm sure to get a lot of negative reactions to this, but it's just my current feeling towards the situation. After all, their job is to protect the citizens, so it should be considered gross negligence on their part should it happen. Seems logical and reasonable to me.

TM said "    sunzu said "If the victim's name in this case was the the name of your son/ daughter mother/sister etc. would you feel the same? Would organizing a ball tournament fundraiser for Mental Health help with the pain? It's impossible to feel what this mother is feeling but try and honestly ask yourself could you forgive or forget and not question our justice system?   What kind of counselling has this family received? All the while the murderer of her son received the best and on our dime I might add! I can hardly put into words what I feel.... " If it was someone you loved/cared about, a father or brother, would you want to see them locked up because they suffered from a mental illness? Killed? Sent away?     I don't necessarily agree he should be free and not monitored but I also don't feel he should be locked up. "

I know of families that have disowned a member for far less than what Li did. They couldn`t stand the shame and embarrassment.

So maybe you & or your family members should board a Grey Hound Bus with this animal in the back of the bus. & as your nicely settling in for a long ride you have a knife at your throat and you wonder WHY...All you people who are sticking up for this monster have to put yourself in the shoes of those who lost someone DEAR to them, and of the passengers who did not expect to have to witness this on their trip.. This is something that no one can ever forget.. Many of those passengers perhaps will never be able to have the freedom to take a bus ride again..Why are you protecting this criminal, Why are we so blind to forget the many victims here & only think of the bad guy... Its takes only a split second for anyone to say ( Oh I feel good today ,, maybe I don't need my meds ) I hope each & everyone of you who are supporting this horrible creature will be on the next bus, or park bench, or just walking down the street, when you run in to him... Will you feel sorry for him then ?????

who witnessed this heinous crime... how can they ever forget? How can they deal with the flashbacks?  
 
We seen a post on FB last night, can anyone confirm what was posted? Apparently one of the RCMP that was on that scene that horrible day that Tim was brutally murdered committed suicide after suffering PTSD all these years. Does anyone know if this is true?

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/mountie-who-witnessed-bus-beheading-dies-by-suicide-1.1918550