Bus beheader 'ate victim, kept body parts'
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Charged with horrific murder: Vince Weiguang Li is escorted to his court appearance (Reuters: Fred Greenslade)
A Chinese immigrant who stabbed, gutted and beheaded a fellow passenger on a bus travelling across Canada last week also cannibalised the victim and pocketed his nose, lips and ear, a court heard overnight.
Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton, faces a second degree murder charge in the horrific case.
The victim has been identified by friends as Tim McLean, a 22-year-old man who was returning home to Winnipeg from a job as a carnival worker in Edmonton in Western Canada.
In his second court appearance, Li was overheard saying "please kill me," his interim defence lawyer Randy Janis said.
Prosecutors said he appeared to be eating pieces of his victim when police surrounded the bus on a desolate highway about 90 kilometres west of Winnipeg last week immediately following the July 30 attack.
Li had decapitated the victim and was taunting police and bystanders with the head, the Crown said.
According to reports, McLean had been asleep, his cheek pressed against the window of the bus when his assailant struck suddenly, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest with a "big Rambo knife."
The other 34 passengers and the driver were jolted by "blood-curdling screams" and fled, bracing the door on their way out to trap the assailant inside the bus, witness Garnet Caton told public broadcaster CBC.
"He must have stabbed him 50 times or 60 times," said Mr Caton.
After a three hour standoff, Li tossed a knife and scissors out of a broken window of the bus, jumped out and was subdued by police, the court heard.
In his pants' pocket, police found several body parts sliced from the victim's face, prosecutors said.
According to reports, Li worked mostly solitary jobs, including delivering newspapers and as a church custodian, since his arrival in Canada in 2004.
People who knew Li said the accused had showed signs of mental health troubles in the years leading up to the attack, but refused help.
His estranged wife told police he had been hospitalised for four days in the weeks prior to the attack, the court heard.
Li did not speak in court. He nodded yes when asked by the judge if he understood the seriousness of the charge and shook his head no when asked if he wanted a lawyer.
"He doesn't seem to want to engage in any discourse," Mr Janis said after meeting with Li.
"His few responses are non-verbal, there's very little eye contact. Occasionally, he'll nod or shake his head to answer," he said, describing Li as withdrawn.
The judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation of the accused before his next scheduled court appearance on September 8.
Meanwhile, Greyhound, the bus carrier on which the attack occurred, has scrambled since the incident to remove advertising billboards promoting the relaxation of bus travel.
The ads carried the slogan, "There's a reason you've never heard of bus rage".
The ad campaign was suppose to have ended, but the company discovered some billboards were still up and newspaper inserts were still waiting to be sent out, Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh said.
- AFP
