The man accused of stabbing three people at a festival in the Chinese neighborhood of Vancouver in September 2023 declared himself innocent of three positions of aggravated assault.
Blair Donnelly, who attended the Court in a Navy’s Sweat Costume and took notes with a pen and a legal pad, had been a license without an escort of the BC Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam on the day of the attack.
The trial only by judge began in the Supreme Court of BC in Vancouver on Monday, when Donnelly entered his statements.
The prosecutor of the crown Mark Myhre says that Donnelly was on a day of license of a psychiatric hospital in Coquitlam, BC, for a bicycle ride, but went to Home Depot where he bought a chisel.
He says that Donnelly is bicycle to Braid Skytrain station, where he took the train to Vancouver and attended the Light Up Chinatown festival.
The crown says that Donnelly has admitted that he was the person who later stabbed the three victims.
“I anticipate that the only question of the court is whether Mr. Donnelly is criminally responsible or if he is not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder,” Myhre said.
Prime Minister David Eby says that he is “angry” that the man accused in a triple stabbing in the Chinese neighborhood of Vancouver, was in a day pass from a psychiatric hospital despite his history of attacks with knives and murder.
Myhre says that Donnelly stabbed people sitting in front of him seeing a musical performance just before 6 pm on September 10, 2023, noting that two of the victims were beaten in the back and the third was stabbed in the forearm.
He says that two women were stabbed in the back and received suture points while a man who was stabbed in his arm and also suffered an abrasion in the left knee if the wounds are sold bandaged.
The three victims also received tetanus shots, according to the court.
Myhre said that Donnelly suffers from a mental illness, “but at this point, from the perspective of the crown, live problems are if the disease suffers that day.”
“If so, was it such a nature that he deprived him of the ability to know that what he was doing was wrong?”
The trial is expected to continue for about three weeks and the court has not yet had news of the defense.
A report published last year, written by the former head of the Abbotsford Police Department, Bob Rich, said Donnelly had been expelled from a psychiatric care center 99 times in the year before the stabbing without incident.
He stabbed a friend while in a one -day pass in 2009 and attacked a patient fellow with a butter knife shortly after returning from the license in 2017, according to the documents of the BC Review Board.
