B.C. accepts change for psychiatric care after alleged attack by mentally ill man

VANCOUVER — A report into a triple stabbing at a festival in Vancouver’s Chinatown last year says the man accused of the crimes had been let out of a psychiatric care facility 99 times in the year prior without incident.

The report, authored by former Abbotsford Police chief Bob Rich, says the suspect in the stabbing, Blair Donnelly, was on his 100th unescorted leave from the BC Forensic Psychiatric Hospital on Sept. 10, 2023, when he allegedly stabbed three festivalgoers at the Light Up Chinatown Festival.

The external review was ordered by the provincial government after the stabbings.

Donnelly was a resident at the hospital after he was found not criminally responsible for killing his daughter in 2006 while “suffering from a psychotic delusion that God wanted him to kill her,” and he was then ordered to undergo treatment, the review said.

The man was granted an unescorted leave in October 2009, the report says, and he attempted to stab a man in Surrey, B.C., and was later sentenced to 45 days in jail for assault with a weapon.

Donnelly then went “eight years without incident,” before assaulting another hospital patient in 2017, but was again found not criminally responsible and granted an “absolute discharge” by the court in that case, the report says.

Between August 2022 and Sept. 9, 2023, hospital records show that Donnelly was allowed to leave the hospital unsupervised 99 times without any issues.

Rich’s report said he found no breaches in policy, but noted the hospital’s “patient care model … is not optimal” for handling risky patients trying to “reintegrate” back into society.

“It is my opinion that some patients may never be well enough to live unsupervised in the community,” the review said.

Rich’s report makes several recommendations to better handle “higher-risk patients,” including bolstering their care teams, improving policies around granting patient leaves, shoring up staff training in forensics and the use of “risk-management tools” such as GPS tracking systems.

The care team model includes a psychiatrist, a nurse and a social worker assigned to hospital patients for the duration of their stay, and had been in use at the facility before 2015, the review said, and should be policy again.

“Having a team that has witnessed the entirety of a patient’s hospital stay, and has in-depth knowledge of their index offence, is essential,” the review said.

The B.C. Ministry of Health said Friday in a statement that it has accepted all of Rich’s recommendations and has already begun implementing them including “following new polices for granting leave privileges at the hospital.”

Suspects found not criminally responsible by the courts come under the jurisdiction of the BC Review Board, which holds hearings and issues decisions about whether a patient should be kept in custody or allowed to live in the community.

Before the stabbings, Donnelly had been before the board in April 2023 for an annual hearing, and it found he “continued to require intensive supervision” at the hospital before being allowed out on unescorted leaves.

The board’s ruling from that hearing was leaked to the media after the attack, and Donnelly later tried to block publication of the board’s reasons on privacy grounds, but the attempt was dismissed in October 2023.

The board said in its ruling that its decision making needed to be open and transparent because the function of the board isn’t widely understood, even by those in the justice system.

“The Review Board’s role is to deal with individuals charged with criminal offences, often very serious criminal offences, who are either unfit, by reason of a mental illness, to stand trial or judged not criminally responsible as a result of a mental illness.”

Court records show Donnelly is due back in Vancouver provincial court in March 2025.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press