Prairie Awful Update

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Last summer I wrote a couple of postings about a horrendous crime that took place in a Greyhound bus out on the Canadian prairie. It was late at night and most of the passengers were asleep or watching a movie when the evening’s calm was suddenly interrupted by screams from Tim McLean, a young carnival worker who was sitting in the rear of the bus. It quickly became evident that McLean was being stabbed repeatedly by his seatmate, a Chinese immigrant by the name of Vince Li. The driver managed to get the bus off of the road as the panicked passengers rushed for the door. They assembled along the side of the road waiting on help, while inside the bus Li severed the head of his victim and chewed on his bloody flesh.

This past week the case went to trial. It lasted two days, and only two witnesses testified. Both were psychiatrists. Not surprisingly, the defendant was adjudged to be “not criminally responsible due to mental illness.” Also not surprisingly, many are angry over that decision, and the victim’s mother is damned angry.

The insanity defense and subsequent verdict were almost foregone conclusions. How could a sane person hack off a fellow human being’s head and munch on his flesh? Even without the expert testimony from psychiatrists, how could any rational person come to a conclusion other than insanity? There was no history between these men – they were literally strangers on a bus who happened to be sitting next to one another.

Li, according to the psychiatrists, is schizophrenic. He believed that God wanted him to kill his fellow passenger because McLean was a force of evil. God told him to do it. Li cut his victim’s body into many pieces, stuffed some into plastic bags, and put McLean’s ear, nose, and tongue in his pocket. He did not want the murdered man to be able to come back and wreak revenge on him.

The anger regarding the verdict was also predictable. Family members and friends of the young victim have suffered a loss that is very real. Someone they knew well was removed from them – forever – in a manner so bizarre and gruesome that the method of the death became more of a story than the death itself. They want justice, but in a situation where justice is impossible, they will settle for vengeance. And an indeterminate period of confinement in a mental facility doesn’t mitigate their desire for justice or vengeance, it only makes them angrier.

Vince Li will have his mental status reviewed every year. There may come a day, after years of quality mental treatment, when he is determined to have regained his mental health. When and if that day comes, Vince Li will be released back into society.

The fairness of what transpired in court can be argued logically and passionately by supporters of the verdict and by those who believe it was a miscarriage of justice. Was it Vince Li who killed the young man on the bus, or was it some evil demon inhabiting his body? Should he be killed, jailed, exorcised, or hospitalized and treated? The judge chose the most humane response and passed this problem on to mental health providers. If they do their job properly, Vince Li may yet be able to contribute something of benefit to society. But if this sentence generates a bad outcome, society will be weakened by an onslaught of rabid demands for codified vengeance.

Decapitation, Cannibalism, and an Unfortunate Ad Campaign

by Pa Rock

While Chinese immigrant Vince Weiguang Li was busy hacking off Tim McLean's head on the floor of a Greyhound bus in rural Canada, and, according to some reports, dining on pieces of the lad's flesh, Greyhound Bus Lines was rolling out their newest advertising campaign. Their catchy slogan for this year's travelers was: "There's a reason you've never heard of bus rage."

Whoops!

Needless to say, the company is busy pulling down all of the new ads. Maybe they should stick with their old standard: "Take the bus and leave the driving to us."

Prairie Awful

by Pa Rock

Earlier this week a quiet young man was stabbed to death and beheaded as he was traveling across the Canadian prairie on a Greyhound bus. The victim was 22-year-old Tim McLean, a carny who was en route home to visit his parents, sisters, and little brother in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He had boarded the bus in Edmonton, Alberta, the site of his most recent carnival employment.

Also boarding in Edmonton was Vince Weiguang Li, a forty-year-old newspaper carrier who worked for, among other papers, The Edmonton Sun. Li was the attacker in this bizarre crime. According to witnesses he initially sat in the front of the bus. After a stop in Manitoba where he stepped outside and had a cigarette and some polite conversation with a lady passenger, he re-boarded the bus and moved to the back where he sat down next to McLean - who was dozing with his head resting on the window.

Twelve miles outside of Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, while passengers were napping or watching "The Legend of Zorro" on their seat monitors, the air was cut with a "bloodcurdling scream" coming from behind them. Turning in horror, they saw the attacker standing next to his victim and repeatedly stabbing him in the chest with a "Rambo" hunting knife. The rear section of the bus was quickly turning bright red from the grisly arterial spray. The driver managed to get the bus stopped, and the passengers fled in panic.

The driver, a passenger, and a passing truck driver went back on the bus to see if anything could be done for the victim, and to attempt to subdue the attacker. As they entered they saw Li on the floor trying to cut off McLean's head. The driver managed to disable the bus before the knife-wielding attacker left his business on the floor and rushed at them, forcing the three would-be rescuers off of the bus. The three were able to barricade Li on the bus until the police arrived. During that standoff, the killer brought McLean's head up to the front of the bus to show the terrified on-lookers.

Those were the facts as gleaned from The Edmonton Sun and Yahoo News. Those who are desirous of more gory details should park themselves in front of any cable news show. I'm sure that somewhere tonight Nancy Grace and Geraldo are embroiled in a bidding war for the severed head, so there will be more "news."

This was the story of a nexus in the lives of two people. One was obviously psychotic, probably hearing voices - Jesus, the Queen, Bob Marley - who knows. His background may have included extensive drug use, childhood trauma, and lapsed mental health care. (Oddly, he had no criminal history.) Chances are good that he had been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs but wasn't taking them. Thousands of men and women just like him are sleeping on America's sidewalks tonight, and more than a few are zoned out, going nowhere on a Greyhound bus.

The person whose life path crossed that of Vince Li at the worst possible moment was a slight young man, roughly seventy pounds lighter than his assailant. Friends say Tim McLean had never had a fight in his life, and he usually tried to avoid contact with others. When he did socialize, it was over a card game or an all-night game of Risk. He worked the carnival circuit because he liked to travel and see different places. All that he wanted that last afternoon of his life was to catch some shut-eye before he got back to his family in Winnipeg.

Tim McLean and Vince Weiguang Li had no history between them and they exchanged no words, but they will forever be linked in an indelible bloodstain on the Canadian prairie. McLean didn't expect to die that day, and Vince Li probably didn't expect to kill, but something happened in the mind of one that ended the life of the other, and the peaceful prairie will forever be mocked with that awfulness of that happenstance encounter.