'Please kill me,' says Canada bus beheading suspect

A man accused of beheading and eating parts of a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus told a Canadian judge: “Please kill me.”

Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Michel Chartier ordered Vince Weiguang Li to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

Yesterday prosecutor Joyce Dalmyn, who argued for the evaluation, revealed new details about the attack which happened last Wednesday night.

She said Li, 40, had a plastic bag containing his victim’s ear, nose and part of a mouth in his pocket when officers arrested him. The only response officers received from him was: “I have to stay on the bus forever,” Ms Dalmyn said.

Ms Dalmyn also said Li carried the victim’s severed head back and forth on the bus “taunting” officers. Armed with a knife and a pair of scissors, he was also observed “cutting body parts from the victim and eating those body parts”, she said.

In an interview with police after his arrest, Li refused to speak for the most part, said Ms Dalmyn, but on four occasions, however, he did indicate in a low voice that he was guilty.

Police are looking into information that Li may have spent as many as four days in a psychiatric centre before the attack.

Li, who immigrated to Canada from China in 2004, is charged with the second-degree murder of 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean – an attack which witnesses aboard the bus said appeared to be unprovoked. He has yet to enter a plea.

He was due to appear in court in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, yesterday, to determine whether he should undergo psychiatric testing, but the judge adjourned the hearing for a short recess to allow a legal aid lawyer to confer with Li. Ms Dalmyn said Li refused to work with the lawyer.

Since his arrest, Li has refused to speak to prosecutors and his court-appointed lawyers.

When asked by Judge Chartier after the recess if he wanted a lawyer, Li shook his head and then quietly said: “Please kill me.”

Ms Dalmyn said later: “There were some people in the courtroom that were taken aback by it. Those were the only words I heard him utter in the courtroom.”

Li is due back in court on September 8.

Thirty-seven passengers were aboard the Greyhound from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, as it travelled at night along a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway about 12 miles from Portage La Prairie.

Some were sleeping and others watching a film on bus television screens when Li attacked Mr McLean, allegedly stabbing him dozens of times.

As horrified passengers fled the bus, Li severed Mr McLean’s head, displaying it to some of the passengers outside the bus, witnesses said. He then began hacking at the body.

A police officer at the scene reported seeing the attacker hacking off pieces of the victim’s body and eating them, according to a police tape leaked on the internet.

:: Greyhound has scrapped a billboard ad campaign extolling the relaxing benefits of bus travel.

The ad’s punchline was “there’s a reason you’ve never heard of ’bus rage’.”

Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh said the company felt the ad, launched last year, could be offensive and that it was no longer appropriate.