Canadian Maniac Decapitates Fellow Passenger

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Barnabas



Is Detroit in Colombia?

It's in Canada.

[Garth Vader]

Originally posted by Lonestar
It's the Prairie provinces. Everyone knows that the most criminals in Canada come from there.

Look at the 2007 murder rates by city in Canada:

http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080717/d080717b.htm

City         Murder Rate
Winnipeg         3.6
Saskatoon        3.6
Edmonton         3.3
Calgary          3.1
Trois-Rivieres   2.7
Sudbury          2.5
Regina           2.5
Vancouver        2.4
Toronto          2.0
Saint John       2.0
Montreal         1.6
Hamilton         1.6
Ottawa           1.6
Thunder Bay      1.6
Halifax          1.8

We're number 1

[Agathon]

At least you aren't from Loserpeg, Garth.

The name the press seems to be going with for the crim is: "The Butcher of Bus 1170".

If you ask me, that sounds pretty lame. I'd go with "The Highlander" myself.

edit: the guy has been identified as Vince Weiguang Li, of Edmonton. I guess that makes him a Chinaman (Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-Canadian, please).

Expect grumbling about immigrants.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
...but he's most likely to be looking at the guy he's standing. Even I'm brave enough to attack someone from the rear.

Well, let's say you just woke up and people are screaming and shouting and pushing to the front of the bus... not only is that going to get your 'fight or flight' going, but with everyone going one direction and the confusion chances are that anyone w/o training is going to get away from the guy. This aside from the cramped fighting conditions and the fact he was a "big guy".

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
At least you aren't from Loserpeg, Garth.

The name the press seems to be going with for the crim is: "The Butcher of Bus 1170".

If you ask me, that sounds pretty lame. I'd go with "The Highlander" myself.

edit: the guy has been identified as Vince Weiguang Li, of Edmonton. I guess that makes him a Chinaman (Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-Canadian, please).

Expect grumbling about immigrants.

This is the kid, Tim McLean. He's not been officially confirmed by cops as the victim but friends have identified him?



He was 22.

[Asher]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/08/01/stabbing-victim.html

Friends ID man killed on bus; suspect silent in court

Friends are describing the victim of a gruesome killing aboard a Winnipeg-bound Greyhound bus as a bubbly young man who was returning home from working at a carnival in Edmonton.

Police have not confirmed the identity of the man stabbed to death aboard a bus late Wednesday and beheaded, according to witness accounts, but friends have said it was Tim McLean Jr., 22, of Winnipeg.

RCMP announced Friday morning that they have charged Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton with second-degree murder.

Li appeared at the Manitoba provincial court in Portage la Prairie around 10 a.m. CT without a lawyer and refused to speak to anyone.

He shuffled into the courthouse under the weight of heavy leg shackles, with his eyes focused on the floor. His right hand was heavily bandaged and there was visible bruising on his face, CBC's Cameron MacIntosh reported.

The judge asked him twice if he had a lawyer, but the accused just stared at the ground. When the judge asked whether Li was using his right to remain silent, he nodded his head.

The Crown asked for a psychiatric assessment, but the judge said the accused must see legal aid about getting a lawyer before proceeding further. Li was remanded into custody until his next appearance on Tuesday.

Second-degree murder, under the Criminal Code, is commonly defined as unpremeditated murder. First-degree murder refers to a killing that is planned and deliberate, but also when death is caused by sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping and forcible confinement.
'He will always be in their hearts'

In an e-mail to CBC News, friend Jossie Kehler wrote that McLean was loved by everyone, had a bubbly personality and was a ladies' man.

"He has a lot of friends and they all are very upset he's gone, and they would like to say they miss him and he will always be in their hearts," she wrote.

"People say no one's perfect, but Tim, he was," she wrote. "He did nothing bad to anyone."

Hundreds of Facebook users flocked Friday to a tribute group titled R.I.P Tim McLean set up overnight to send their condolences to family and friends as well as express their shock at the grisly story that made international headlines.

"R.I.P Tim McLean, You are loved and you will be missed dearly!" the site description read.

Friends say McLean had taken a job with the Red River Exhibition and then went to work in Edmonton, but had decided to return home.

On McLean's MySpace page, under the name JoKAwiLd, he describes himself as a short, five-foot-five guy, weighing about 125 pounds.

Witnesses described the attacker as a hulking six-foot-tall man in sunglasses who appeared to weigh more than 200 pounds.
Father trying to reach wife

McLean's father, Tim McLean Sr., told CBC News on Thursday night that he was in the process of trying to get confirmation from the police that his son was, in fact, the victim.

He said he was also trying to reach his wife, who is on an Alaskan cruise until next week.

The father said his son had sent him a text message around 7:30 p.m. as the bus was leaving Brandon, the last leg of its journey, to ask if he could come home for the night. Tim McLean Jr. was returning to Winnipeg from Edmonton, where he had been working at an exhibition.

The father told his son that, of course, he could come home, and that was the last contact he had with him.

The RCMP would not confirm the reports of beheading, saying only that a stabbing took place around 8:30 p.m. CT on an eastbound Greyhound bus on the Trans-Canada Highway about 20 kilometres west of Portage la Prairie.

An autopsy was scheduled for Friday at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre, and police were waiting for the results before deciding, with input from the family, whether to make the victim's name public.

"The RCMP are mindful of the range of emotions being experienced by the family of the deceased over the loss of their loved one in such a horrific incident. Our thoughts are with them," the RCMP said in a statement.

Witnesses said the victim got on the bus in Edmonton. His attacker came aboard in Brandon and sat away from the victim toward the front of the bus, they said. After a short cigarette break, however, the attacker moved his belongings and chose a seat beside the young man.

Garnet Caton, who was sitting in the seat in front of the victim, said the young man was sleeping with his headphones on when he was attacked.

Caton said he heard a "blood-curdling scream" and turned around to see the attacker holding a large "Rambo" hunting knife above the victim, "continually stabbing him in the chest area."
Passengers fled

"He must have stabbed him 50 times or 60 times," said Caton, who jumped out of his seat when he realized what was happening and began ushering passengers to the front of the bus.

As panicked passengers fled the bus, "the attacker was over top of the victim … continually cutting him. I think the victim was gone at that point," Caton said.

Caton, the driver and a trucker who had stopped at the scene later boarded the vehicle to see if the victim was still alive.

"When we came back on the bus, it was visible at the end of the bus he was cutting the guy's head off and pretty much gutting him up," said Caton.

The attacker ran at them, Caton said, and they ran out of the bus, holding the door shut as he tried to slash at the trio.

When the attacker tried to drive the bus away, the driver disabled the vehicle, Caton said.

"While we were watching the door, he calmly walks up to the front with the head in his hand and the knife and just calmly stares at us and drops the head right in front of us," said Caton.

Another passenger, Cody Olmstead, said: "They did an awesome thing, holding him in there, because if not, what would have happened?"

RCMP crisis negotiators communicated with the suspect for several hours while he was on the bus. Around 1:30 a.m., he attempted to jump from a bus window and was subdued and arrested, RCMP said.

Police cruisers arrived about 10 minutes after the attack began, he estimated, and officers began directing passengers to school buses to take them to a hotel in Brandon.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


I was just thinking that. Cowards!

Bystander effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

To counter the bystander effect when you are the victim, a studied recommendation is to pick a specific person in the crowd to appeal to for help rather than appealing to the larger group generally.[citation needed] If you are the only person reacting to an emergency, point directly to a specific bystander, say their name if you know it, and give them a specific task such as, "You. [Or name.] Call the police." These steps place all responsibility on a specific person instead of allowing it to diffuse. Furthermore, pluralistic ignorance is countered by the implication that all bystanders are indeed interested in helping, and social proof kicks in when one or more of the crowd steps in to assist.

Good to know, since I take the bus often.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Lonestar
It's the Prairie provinces. Everyone knows that the most criminals in Canada come from there.

Look at the 2007 murder rates by city in Canada:

http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080717/d080717b.htm

City         Murder Rate
Winnipeg         3.6
Saskatoon        3.6
Edmonton         3.3
Calgary          3.1
Trois-Rivieres   2.7
Sudbury          2.5
Regina           2.5
Vancouver        2.4
Toronto          2.0
Saint John       2.0
Montreal         1.6
Hamilton         1.6
Ottawa           1.6
Thunder Bay      1.6
Halifax          1.8

It's interesting that Trois-Rivieres is so high up there. Wikipedia claims that it's one of the three areas with least criminal activity though there appears to be some difference in all crimes vs. just homicides data, for example the Yukon and NWT have the most crimes per capita but homicide rates of 0.0 per 100,000.

[Winston]

Originally posted by Nostromo

Bystander effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

To counter the bystander effect when you are the victim, a studied recommendation is to pick a specific person in the crowd to appeal to for help rather than appealing to the larger group generally.[citation needed] If you are the only person reacting to an emergency, point directly to a specific bystander, say their name if you know it, and give them a specific task such as, "You. [Or name.] Call the police." These steps place all responsibility on a specific person instead of allowing it to diffuse. Furthermore, pluralistic ignorance is countered by the implication that all bystanders are indeed interested in helping, and social proof kicks in when one or more of the crowd steps in to assist.

Good to know, since I take the bus often.

Now, the next step is to figure out how to counter the Wikipedia effect of taking as Gospel anything and everything included in the articles of that damned "project".

"Pluralistic ignorance", heh, good one.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Winston


Now, the next step is to figure out how to counter the Wikipedia effect of taking as Gospel anything and everything included in the articles of that damned "project".

It's probably a more reliable source than actual Gospel

[Winston]

Either way, it seems its message is frequently adhered to more religiously.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Winston


Now, the next step is to figure out how to counter the Wikipedia effect of taking as Gospel anything and everything included in the articles of that damned "project".

"Pluralistic ignorance", heh, good one.

Thank you for assuming I'm an idiot. I heard about the bystander effect in my psychology courses and I just linked the Wiki article for those of you who haven't heard about it. Its convenient, that's all.

[Winston]

Sorry, Nostromo.

It's not easy being a Wikipedia dissident in this day and age. And I'm not too good at being nice about these things.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Winston


Now, the next step is to figure out how to counter the Wikipedia effect of taking as Gospel anything and everything included in the articles of that damned "project".

"Pluralistic ignorance", heh, good one.

The bystander effect is well documented and studied in the field of Psychology. I took social psych courses that covered it back in university also.

The real question is how do we get rid of idiots who reject anything on Wikipedia even when it is amply sourced and a well regarded theory in academia and the real world?

[Patroklos]

Now that I know that most of the passengers were asleep I don't blame them for not helping. Most probably had no clue what was going on until after they got off the bus.

Asher, I thought you said similar sized US cities?