While I was preparing to do an interview with a Canadian radio station in Manitoba, I did little research and confirmed what I had previously read: there are Canadians concerned about the increase in homelessness and murder since Canada went down the same mistaken path as the United States concerning deinstitutionalization. I vaguely recalled this incident several years ago, but the full horror of it just astonishes me:
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 McLean in the neck and chest. The attacker then decapitated McLean and displayed his severed head to other passengers outside who had fled the bus in horror. The driver and two other men attempted to rescue McLean but were chased away by Li, who slashed wildly at them from behind the locked bus doors. Li then went back to the body and began severing other body parts and consuming some of McLean's flesh.This May 23, 2012 Telegraph news story gives the diagnosis and the hallucinations and delusions that caused Li to do what he did:
In an interview with Chris Summerville, head of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, Li spoke for the first time saying that he began hearing "the voice of God" in 2004.The rest of it is far too gruesome for me a quote.
"The voice told me that I was the third story of the Bible, that I was like the second coming of Jesus (and that) I was to save people from a space alien attack," he said, according to a transcript published by Canadian media.
Li said he had purchased the knife used in the attack for protection "from the aliens" and claimed that he was unaware at that time that he suffered from schizophrenia.
The good news is that Li is doing much better now, and is now eligible for escorted visits to town.
Well, you know, those Canadians are much lower key...
ReplyDeleteAnd, in terms of actual mass murders per capita, I wonder what the stats are?
Considering we are 300+ million and they 30+ million?
gfa
They have about 40% of the murder rate of the U.S. I have an article in to National Review at the moment about the interesting regional variation in murder rates -- the prairie provinces actually have HIGHER murder rates than their American neighbors.
ReplyDeleteDo you mean like Montana and the Dakotas?
ReplyDeleteAs for murder rates, isn't there also a correlation between how warm/cold the climate is and how high/low the murder rate?
Yes, like Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Temperature correlates with murder rates, hence the importance of comparing equivalent climates.
ReplyDeleteAmerican whites have similar murder rates to much-less-well-armed Europeans. Most of the difference in murder rates between the U.S. and Europe is the number of murders committed by blacks (and to a lesser extent, hispanics).
ReplyDeleteMost white murderers kill whites, and most black murderers kill blacks. Oakland, with more than half the white population of Boise, has barely twice as many white murder victims - in both cities, there are years where that number is zero.
Some part of the problem in the U.S. is that people who don't live near blacks, or who dislike blacks, don't really care to do anything about violent crime, because it doesn't affect *them*. Another part of the problem is that blacks and white liberals who do live near blacks have a very strong distrust of the police, and aren't (usually) willing to tolerate more effective policing to bring down the murder rate. There's also still a huge victim complex in the black community - every time a reporter talks to people who knew a guy arrestred for murder, if the perp was black, the friends and family will still say things like "he was such a nice guy - he'd never hurt a fly". When the perp is white, you get more comments like "yeah, he was trouble", or "I'm not surprised it came to this", or "he never really was right in the head".
Interestingly, when it comes to mass shootings in the U.S., the racial group that's over-represented is *Asians*. Whites, blacks, and hispanics all have (over time) about the same rates of mass murder, but Asians are over-represented about 2:1 or 3:1.