Minassian was ‘wishing for more female victims,’ doctor tells trial

Psychiatrist interviewed van killer after he tried to die by suicide in jail

Alek Minassian told a forensic psychiatrist in the fall of 2018 that as he drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians on Yonge Street he realized he was hitting random people.

“But in his mind, and these are his words, (he was) ‘wishing for more female victims.’ He talked about hoping there would be more young, attractive females being hurt in particular,” said Dr. Rebecca Chauhan, a forensic psychiatrist specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry, in her testimony on day five of Minassian’s judge-only murder trial.

He said he “really wanted to do it” and his hope was to die to avoid prison, though he knew there was a possibility police would not kill him, she said.

Chauhan said that when she asked Minassian how he felt about what he did — he has admitted to deliberately killing 10 people and intending to kill many more, accelerating directly at them and over them in a four-minute rampage — Minassian

said he “felt happy and that it was ‘worth it,’ ” Chauhan said.

“He was sure when people Google his name, it will come up, and it makes him feel that he

d to get attention,’ ” Chauhan said.

As he said all this, Chauhan testified, Minassian showed no emotion and was very matterof-fact.

When asked by Minassian’s lawyer if Minassian understood the devastation he had caused or if he had shown any remorse, Chauhan said no.

“He intellectually will say he knows people wouldn’t have been happy with it,” she said. “In terms of really appreciating the magnitude of how upset people would be and how distressed the victims would be and how distressed his parents would be, no, I don’t think he really appreciates the magnitude of this highly violent offence.”

Chauhan also concluded in her report that Minassian’s autism spectrum disorder made him vulnerable to becoming hyperfixated on and possibly “indoctrinated” by the manifesto of a woman-hating mass shooter in the months before the attack.

Minassian, 28, has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of first-degga mitted that he intended to kill all of his victims on April 23, 2018, and that his actions were planned and deliberate, making his state of mind the focus of his trial.

Autism advocates and experts have stressed that autism is not associated with violence or criminal behaviour.

Chauhan testified she was asked by a fellow forensic psychiatrist retained by the defence to assess Minassian to confirm his diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

She did not provide an opinion on whether Minassian is, as the defence argues, not criminally responsible because he is incapable of understanding the moral wrongfulness of his actions due to his autism spectrum disorder.

She also did not provide an opinion on the severity of Minassian’s autism, though she noted his most significant deficit was in social interactions, where he was well below what would be expected for his aver

age or above-average intelligence and some of his other skills. She said his social skills would be “consistent with someone in early childhood.”

Chauhan also said she believed Minassian had a degree of “mindblindness,” meaning he could not understand the perspectives or emotional responses of other people, or understand the intentions of other people beyond a “simplistic” level. Someone with “mindblindness” would focus on whether an outcome is right or w intention behind the outcome was right or wrong, Chauhan said.

People with autism are by no means “amoral,” she added.

She noted that Minassian clearly knew killing was against the law.

Chauhan interviewed Minassian at St. Joseph’s Health Centre in Toronto in the fall of 2018, a week after he attempted to die by suicide in jail.

Minassian told Chauhan he’d researched spree killings in high school and fantasized about them at times when he felt “hopeless.”

He said he stumbled across a manifesto written by Elliot Rodger in 2016 and, in December 2017, became “obsessed” with what he saw as their similarities — an inability to get a girlfriend, loneliness and an autism spectrum disorder. The manifesto, which is steeped in a violent hatred of women for “denying him” sex,

as written before Rodger killed six people and then himself in 2014 in California.

Minassian claimed to police in an interview hours after his arrest that he had communicated with Rodger.

He said he thought about getting a gun, like Rodger did, but decided it was too difficult and settled on a van, Chauhan testified.

Chauhan said Minassian’s obsession with Rodger appears to be “informed by his autism spectrum diagnosis” because of the patterns of hyperfixation he’d shown in the past, she said.

In her conclusion, she said his description of reading the manifesto over and over, and thinking of it daily, was “suggestive of him becoming hyperfocused and indoctrinated by the writings of Elliot Rodger.”

“He becomes very fixated on the facts of what Elliot Rodger did, but doesn’t see any difference between them as persons,” she said. “He really just focuses on the outcome and the notoriety that he has.”

The trial continues Thursday.