Vince Li, the man who beheaded a passenger on a Greyhound bus last year (and, uh, ate pieces of his body) has been diagnosed schizophrenic and will not go to jail for his crime. He will, however, be institutionalized.

Megan Seling is The Stranger's managing editor. She mostly writes about hockey, snacks, and music. And sometimes her dog, Johnny Waffles.

21 replies on “Greyhound Bus Beheader Found “Not Criminally Responsible””

  3. They’ll keep him in forever, though and he’ll be properly treated. I really like that they actually take things like being completely bloody crazy into account. Thanks to Reagan, that doesn’t happen down in the States. Being crazy means that a judge may “recommend” you get meds/counseling/psych care… but they don’t actually have to do any of it, despite the recommendation.

  4. They made the completely correct decision. It’s not like he’s ever going to get back on a bus again. They’ll keep him good and tranquilized for a long time.

    Putting him in prison would only have made things more dangerous for him, the other prisoners, and the guards.
    Prison guards are not trained to deal with stuff like that on a regular basis.

  5. @3 They’d better keep him forever. It would be completely unacceptable to expose the general public to the risk that he would relapse into this kind of behavior if released.

  8. Let’s say you’re schizo and God tells you to kill someone and you do it. Isn’t that the same as when Nazis said they were only following orders?

  9. @5,

    Particularly if he’s “cured” by meds that he has to take regularly and make him not feel so good. That was the case with the guy who shot up Northern Illinois University (he stopped taking his meds because he didn’t like their side effects) and it should not be tolerated from a known threat to the public.

  11. The fact that we as a society accept the belief in a god as valid makes it more likely that shit like this will occur. It removes another sanity check by accepting as sane the notion that there is an all powerful being to whom we owe some level of obedience.

    And really, what is the difference between this guy talking to god and the pope, or Mother Teresa, or anyone else who claims to speak to or feel god. I mean biblically being told to kill is not exactly something that is uncommon. Hell we should be happy god did not tell this guy to slaughter the whole bus, aside of course from some choice virgins. (Numbers 31:16-18) This guy is no more insane than Moses, or Jesus*, or any other bible hero.

    Faith is dangerous.

    *I count threatening people with hell and cities with destruction, especially when one believes oneself to have the power to follow through, as quite similar.

  13. The person and the head would both have to purchase tickets…so Vince Li is increasing Greyhounds revenue.

    You don’t jail stimulus, bub.

  16. No one ever mentions why this guy was out walking around by himself and not on his meds. He must have some history that some psychiatrist new about, someone should have known he was capable of hurting someone. He beheaded and disemboweled someone then put parts of the victims body in plastic 6 plastic bags which he hid around the inside of the bus then proceeded to gouge out the victims eyes and eat parts of the victim. They have come to the conclusion he ate the guys eye also.
    Now I am only explaining what he did to make the point that he was extremely mentally ill to do all this and someone would have known.
    But he was allowed to walk around by himself.

  17. @5 & @9

    Typically people who are institutionalized by the courts are less likely to hit the streets again than folks who were sentenced to prison for their crimes. Folks who have been sentenced to an institution are usually in there considerably longer than they would be under any prison sentence for their crimes. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again in this lifetime.

    And yes, for those not sentenced to an institution, taking meds too often does fall by the wayside. The new generations of psychiatric medications have fewer side-effects. If the trend continues, hopefully in a few med generations the side-effects will be minimized to the point that most people will remain on them.

    Of course, there will always be some who prefer to hear their god/voices/etc.

  18. @16, I know. There are a lot of individuals like that who fall through the cracks. The gaps in the system (ours and Canada’s, apparently) are enormous.

    I had a friend whose brother was so violently mentally ill that the jails and mental hospitals wouldn’t keep him. They kept pushing him back on the streets because he was too difficult to deal with. It’s sickening when the places that are supposed to deal with this sort of thing refuse to live up to their responsibility to society. His family begged to have him long-term institutionalized (and rightly so), but no one listened. The brother is no longer a threat, however. He killed himself years ago.

  20. @11, 19- like the Jews, the Christians are a dire threat to social harmony. They are in fact dangerous. Something should be done with them. Something logical and rational. Some sort of solution. Unfortunately some of them carry guns. Let’s see; we’re building trains…

  21. Whether or not this man was a Christian has absolutely nothing to do with anything. A person could be Buddhist, or Muslim, or an atheist, and have schizophrenia and still believe they’re hearing the voice of God. To someone experiencing a true hallucination, it’s not fuzzy or indistinct – it’s as real as it can possibly get and it’s terrifying. There’s no way you can judge what happened in this man’s head unless you’ve experienced something similar. I hope Vince Li gets the treatment he needs, and I hope he’s given the opportunity to lead a normal life one day.

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