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Canada, Tronoto - After Shawn O’Neill’s release from court-mandated psychiatric treatment, he no longer had to visit the hospital every day. And no one could force him to take medicine. So he didn’t.
The first person Shawn O’Neill stabbed that chilly Sunday morning was Christopher Young. O’Neill jumped at him on the Church St. sidewalk and plunged a kitchen knife into his lower right abdomen.
John Tedesco was jogging past Maple Leaf Gardens minutes later when O’Neill drove the same knife into the small of his back.
Sally Kaack, an Australian ballerina, was next. The blade punctured her right lung.
Finally it was Jennifer Tran, a St. Mike’s hospital resident walking home from a night shift. O’Neill stabbed her through her winter coat and the knife broke against an iPhone in her left breast pocket, above her heart.
Police later called it “a rampage.” None of the victims died or were grievously injured, and last week, a Superior Court judge ruled that 62-year-old O’Neill is “not criminally responsible on account of mental illness” (NCR), for the quadruple stabbing on Jan. 25, 2015.
Even so, impact statements included in the ruling highlight how the incident has marked the lives of O’Neill’s victims ever since, prompting anxiety and stress and fear of strangers. The pain, it seems, can linger like an unfading bruise.
But the ruling also underscored a sense that the ordeal could have been avoided.
One year before the attacks, O’Neill was freed from court-mandated psychiatric treatment for paranoid schizophrenia and substance abuse. He entered the system in 1996 when he was deemed “not criminally responsible” for the first time after brandishing a knife on Queen St. For more than 17 years, O’Neill was treated for mental illness, closely monitored by doctors and subject to annual hearings at the Ontario Review Board, a provincial body that oversees roughly 1,500 people deemed NCR by the legal system.
After the board granted O’Neill’s absolute discharge in January 2014 — a move opposed by his family and doctors at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health — he no longer had to visit the hospital every day. And no one could force him to take medicine.
So he didn’t. According to the recent judge’s ruling, O’Neill fell into a spiral of drinking and weed smoking, and stopped taking medication to control his psychotic symptoms.
In late January 2015, “while labouring under delusions” that he needed to stop a murky conspiracy to abuse children, O’Neill grabbed a kitchen knife, went out to the street and stabbed four people.
The judge said that, while O’Neill won’t be criminally sentenced, he is expected to be institutionalized and forced into mental health treatment for a long time.
The first person Shawn O’Neill stabbed that chilly Sunday morning was Christopher Young. O’Neill jumped at him on the Church St. sidewalk and plunged a kitchen knife into his lower right abdomen.
John Tedesco was jogging past Maple Leaf Gardens minutes later when O’Neill drove the same knife into the small of his back.
Sally Kaack, an Australian ballerina, was next. The blade punctured her right lung.
Finally it was Jennifer Tran, a St. Mike’s hospital resident walking home from a night shift. O’Neill stabbed her through her winter coat and the knife broke against an iPhone in her left breast pocket, above her heart.
Police later called it “a rampage.” None of the victims died or were grievously injured, and last week, a Superior Court judge ruled that 62-year-old O’Neill is “not criminally responsible on account of mental illness” (NCR), for the quadruple stabbing on Jan. 25, 2015.
Even so, impact statements included in the ruling highlight how the incident has marked the lives of O’Neill’s victims ever since, prompting anxiety and stress and fear of strangers. The pain, it seems, can linger like an unfading bruise.
But the ruling also underscored a sense that the ordeal could have been avoided.
One year before the attacks, O’Neill was freed from court-mandated psychiatric treatment for paranoid schizophrenia and substance abuse. He entered the system in 1996 when he was deemed “not criminally responsible” for the first time after brandishing a knife on Queen St. For more than 17 years, O’Neill was treated for mental illness, closely monitored by doctors and subject to annual hearings at the Ontario Review Board, a provincial body that oversees roughly 1,500 people deemed NCR by the legal system.
After the board granted O’Neill’s absolute discharge in January 2014 — a move opposed by his family and doctors at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health — he no longer had to visit the hospital every day. And no one could force him to take medicine.
So he didn’t. According to the recent judge’s ruling, O’Neill fell into a spiral of drinking and weed smoking, and stopped taking medication to control his psychotic symptoms.
In late January 2015, “while labouring under delusions” that he needed to stop a murky conspiracy to abuse children, O’Neill grabbed a kitchen knife, went out to the street and stabbed four people.
The judge said that, while O’Neill won’t be criminally sentenced, he is expected to be institutionalized and forced into mental health treatment for a long time.