July 31, 2008
Evil exists
What happens when you find out that evil -- real, malevolent, inexplicable evil -- actually exists in the real world? When you see something right out of an R-rated slasher film, only it's happening right in front of you, in the most mundane, ordinary place.
Like on the Greyhound bus.
[P]assenger Garnet Caton said the victim, who appeared to be about 19, was sleeping with headphones on when his seat mate suddenly began stabbing him as the bus traveled a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway, a dozen miles from Portage La Prairie.
Caton, sitting just one seat in front of the two men, said he heard no exchanges between them prior to the violence.
"We heard this bloodcurdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times," Caton said from a hotel in Brandon, Manitoba, where he and other horrified passengers were taken.
Caton said the driver stopped the bus when he became aware of the savagery going on aboard and passengers scrambled off. He said the suspect appeared to be methodically cutting into the victim's body.
"When he was attacking him, he was calm ... like he was at the beach," said Caton. "There was no rage or, or anything. He was just like a robot stabbing the guy."
The bus driver, Caton and a trucker at the scene re-boarded to see what was happening.
Caton said he saw the suspect had the victim on the floor of the bus and "was cutting his head off and pretty much gutting him" with a large hunting knife.
The attacker turned toward them and the three men quickly left the bus, blocking the door as the attacker slashed at them through an opening. The three secured the door to prevent the man from fleeing. Caton said the driver disabled the vehicle after the attacker tried to drive it away.
As the three guarded the door with a crow bar and a hammer, the attacker went back to the body and calmly came to the front of the bus to show off the head.
Fellow passenger Cody Olmstead said the man "dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body." Olmstead said the man later taunted police and dropped the head in front of them.
Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh said 37 passengers were aboard, many watching the on-board movie "Zorro" when the violence erupted.
[...]
The victim had been on the bus since Edmonton. Caton said the attacker boarded the bus in Brandon, Manitoba, about 80 miles west of Portage La Prairie.
The suspect had been on the bus about an hour and initially did not sit near the victim, Caton said.
"He sat in the front at first, everything was normal," Caton said.
"We went to the next stop and he got off and had a smoke with another young lady there. When he got on the bus again, he came to the back near where I was sitting.
"He put his bags in the overhead compartment. He didn't say a word to anybody. He seemed totally normal," Caton said.
You just never know when the comfortable, gossamer-thin veil of everyday normalcy will be ripped asunder and tossed aside in a bloody, gore-flecked pile.
Evil exists, my friends, inexplicable, unfathomable. It doesn't want to be understood, doesn't want to be cured or fixed.
It just wants to be true to itself, even if that means gutting and decapitating a teenager quietly listening to his iPod on the bus.
Why do I support the right to carry firearms? Because we never know when we'll be faced with such moments, when we might have to act to save ourselves or the lives of others, and I'd prefer to have something more than a cell phone in my hand when the question must be answered: "What am I prepared to do to stop this?"
We owe it to our wives and children, to our community, to strangers on a bus, to be prepared for the day when our actions may save lives.
Like the folks on that rolling Canadian abattoir, we won't have advance notice of where or when the killers amongst us will indulge their bloodlust, let slip their masks and let us see the darkness behind their eyes.
But we can be prepared, do the best we can, and act, even in the presence of such senseless, random, incomprehensible violence.
Even in the presence of evil.
Posted by Mike Lief at July 31, 2008 09:45 PM
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Comments
And Canada doesn't have a Death Penalty.. go figure.
I don't believe anyone that can commit an act as heinous as this deserves anything less than to be gutted and beheaded just like his victim. Not only has he ruined the lives of the victim's family ... what about all the people that were on that bus? They most likely will never forget those images.
Posted by: April Lief at July 31, 2008 10:22 PM
Evil? Really? Not insanity? Complete and unadulterated insanity. When someone engages in a unprovoked knife attack against a defenseless, apparently undeserving victim, in front of 30+ other people, with no effort to hide his actions and the attack involves dozens of stabs and decapitation of the victim, evil is not really the motivating factor here. Deep and abiding insanity is the issue here.
Posted by: Bull Butz at August 2, 2008 06:47 AM
This bus rider was killed by a stroke of evil that is as random and rare as being hit by a bolt of lightning. Your salad could have bacteria causing you to die, your car could blow a tire sending you to a horrific fate, you could get a blood clot in your leg and suffer a stroke on a long plane flight. Rather than let paranoia rule your life after some random person suffers a lightning bolt of bad luck, it's better to live unfettered of a manic arm yourself to the teeth philosophy. I own no guns and don't look over my shoulder.
Posted by: Baratone at August 2, 2008 08:12 AM
While I generally agree with Mike's opinion about gun control, I am not sure that a concealed weapon necessarily would have made a difference here. The victim likley would never have gotten a chance to get it out of the holster.
As for the passengers...opening up fire on a crowded bus would have been an inappropriate response to this.
This was a random act of violence, nothing more, nothing less.
Posted by: RW at August 3, 2008 09:05 PM
RW --
Maybe having a gun wouldn't have saved the victim's life in this incident, but what if the killer had made it off the bus and continued the attack?
In that scenario, having someone nearby with the means to stop the killer in his tracks seems to me to be an unalloyed good thing.
Posted by: Mike Lief at August 3, 2008 09:12 PM
Evil indeed. And hungry too.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/06/2325422.htm
Apparently this guy is so evil he decided to eat the victim and save some of the tastiest body parts (nose, lips, and ear) for later. This guy is many things. Evil is not really on the list. Now bat-shit-crazy, yeah, that one's pretty high up on the list. Disgusting? Yeah, I'd give you that one too. Gourmet? All right, now you're just trying to make me sick...
Posted by: BullButz at August 5, 2008 05:59 PM
OK, looks like I was right. And not only that, but the prosecution and defense agree, insanity, not malevolence was at issue here...
Canada judge: Man not responsible for beheading
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) -- A Canadian judge ruled Thursday that a man accused of beheading and cannibalizing a fellow Greyhound bus passenger is not criminally responsible due to mental illness. The decision means Chinese immigrant Vince Li will be treated in a mental institution instead of going to prison. The family of victim Tim McLean said Li got away with murder.
"A crime was still committed here, a murder still occurred," said Carol deDelley, McLean's mother. "There was nobody else on that bus holding a knife, slicing up my child."
Li stabbed McLean dozens of times and dismembered his body last July while horrified passengers fled.
Justice John Scurfield said the attack was "barbaric" but "strongly suggestive of a mental disorder."
"He did not appreciate the actions he committed were morally wrong," Scurfield said.
Both the prosecution and the defense argued Li can't be held responsible because he had schizophrenia and believed God wanted him to kill McLean because the young man was evil.
Li will be institutionalized without a criminal record and reassessed every year by a mental health review board to determine if he is fit for release.
DeDelley said a yearly hearing is ridiculous and Li should be locked up for the rest of his life.
That Li killed the 22-year-old carnival worker was never in question at the trial. Li has admitted he killed McLean but pleaded not guilty.
Witnesses said Li attacked McLean unprovoked as their bus traveled at night along a desolate stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway.
Passengers fled and stood outside as Li stabbed McLean dozens of times and beheaded and mutilated his body. Finding himself locked inside the bus, Li finally escaped through a window and was arrested.
Li then apologized and pleaded with police to kill him.
Police said McLean's body parts were found throughout the bus in plastic bags, and the victim's ear, nose and tongue were found in Li's pocket.
A psychiatrist called by the prosecution testified that Li cut up McLean's body because he believed that he would come back to life and take revenge.
After the trial, government prosecutor Joyce Dalmyn said people who are mentally ill should be treated, not convicted, when they don't know what they did was wrong.
Li's lawyer, Alan Libman, said, "Mr. Li advised me after court that he's going to work with his treatment team because it's his desire to get better."
McLean's family says they will fight the law that allows people who are found not criminally responsible to be released into the community once they are deemed well, without serving a minimum jail sentence.
Posted by: BullButz at March 5, 2009 02:46 PM