ACCUSED IN VAN ATTACK WAS ODD BUT NEVER VIOLENT, COURT TOLD
`Striking' absence of aggression, expert testifies
As a young child, the future Toronto van attack driver would repeatedly bang his head against the wall, so much so, his parents often held their hands against the wall to soften the blow and prevent him from hurting himself, court heard.
Alek Minassian licked surfaces, didn't engage in imaginative play, was terrified of repeating reflections in mirrors and insisted on cutting out holes he spotted in his toast, even though his cuts made bigger holes, the judge was told at Minassian's trial for 10 counts of first-degree murder.
Before committing mass murder, Minassian's behaviour was strange but never violent, court was told.
His mental health and behaviour is a focus at this trial because Minassian, 28, of Richmond Hill, Ont., admits he rented a van and drove it along a sidewalk in Toronto in 2018 trying to kill as many people as he could, but pleads not guilty because his autism makes him not criminally responsible for his attack.
There were many stark indications that Minassian was not developing normally soon after his birth, said Dr. Alexander Westphal, a U.S.based psychiatrist specializing in autism.
“Alek Minassian is certainly a complicated person but his presentation is very, very kind of confined to autism. It's not like he was also suffering from some other disorder, which was muddying up the picture,” Westphal testified.
Minassian was diagnosed at the age of five with pervasive developmental disorder, an older term describing a form of autism.
“The fact he was diagnosed at five, which is a fairly early age, reflects that his symptoms were striking and needed to be accounted for,” Westphal said as he chronicled Minassian's early medical and social history.
Minassian was slow to talk, didn't make eye contact, often seemed in his own world and not paying attention to what was happening around him, court heard.
He started walking and was toilet trained at typical markers, however.
When he started school he kept licking things, would suddenly run out of kindergarten class, asked repetitive questions but was better at math than most pupils. As he got older, he would repeatedly spit in his hands, which didn't help him socially. He was picked on and made fun of by others.
He had few facial expressions and spoke in a monotone, had trouble understanding the meaning of body language. He couldn't easily apply his intellectual abilities on paper to real-world situations and he had problems feeling and displaying empathy.
He had difficulty making friends and had broad social deficits. He was extremely shy around girls. He would jump back exaggeratedly when a girl walked near him, saying “don't hurt me, don't hurt me,” court was told.
One medical note in his file says he showed aggression when playing with toy figures, but Westphal said there was little context to draw much inference from that; many young boys are.
He said, in fact, there is no evidence of Minassian being violent or aggressive to others.
“Given that he was completely not aggressive in other contexts — the only form of aggression he had ever exhibited was his own hitting his head against a wall — he never exhibited aggression to others,” Westphal said.
Minassian's lawyer, Boris Bytensky, directly asked him if he is aware of any violence or aggression at any point prior to the April 23, 2018, van attack.
“No, no. I mean, it is really striking,” Westphal answered. “There is a striking absence of that, given the reason we are here.”
Minassian is charged with 10 counts of murder and 16 counts of attempted murder.
Court was told earlier that Minassian's autism was the only diagnosis at issue. Bytensky acknowledged it was rare for autism to be the basis for a not criminally responsible defence.
A previous medical expert, Dr. John Bradford, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that he did not think Minassian's autism was justification for a not-criminally-responsible verdict.
Westphal is expected to offer an opinion that Minassian's autism could render him not criminally responsible for his attack.
Throughout the dissection of his life, Minassian watched over a two- way video feed from the Toronto jail where he is being held.
He watched intently, displaying no emotion, while his body was a sea of small, rippling tics, twitches and jerks.
His left elbow regularly jerked out, his shoulders repeatedly pushed back, like he was rearranging some unseen backpack, and his mouth would quickly open and close with a clenched jaw, as if he was stifling a roar.
Westphal said he wanted to address a study previously mentioned at the trial that showed an overpopulation of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or those suspected of having it, with perpetrating mass murder events. He disputed its results, saying many of the mass killers suspected of having autism died without any formal diagnosis, calling links to autism “armchair speculation.”
Westphal said people with autism are not more likely to commit crime or be violent.
Autism is not a catch-all for people with “an oddball lifestyle” and that “a socially isolated person is not the same as autism.” He said that while there are common behavioural features that help diagnose autism, the disorder can affect people in different ways.
Controversially, Westphal refused to testify unless the court — hosting the trial online through the Zoom video platform because of COVID-19 restrictions — agreed videos of his interviews with Minassian would not be seen outside of the courtroom and that any portions of his videos shown in court would be under tight restrictions on who was watching.
He said his demand was partly to prevent copycat violence and also to protect the autism community from misinformation of what Minassian says in the videos, apparently linking autism symptoms to previous killers.
Linking autism to violence is highly contentious. Westphal seems to have concerns of his own.
Shortly before appearing on the Zoom trial, Monday, his biography, photo, contact information and professional CV was deleted from his profile on the Yale School of Medicine website.
And before submitting Westphal's CV to the court to be entered as an exhibit, Bytensky said he first needed to remove identifiers from it, with the agreement of the prosecutors.
His testimony continues Tuesday.