Killer recaptured after failing to return to Pinel hospital
Sean Brennan, the man who disappeared while out on a brief leave from the Philippe Pinel Institute this week, was located by the Montreal police on Wednesday in LaSalle. Brennan was out on an escorted leave and failed to return to the hospital on Monday despite having been classified as a high risk to the public just months ago and having escaped before.
In 2012, Brennan was declared not criminally responsible for having killed Bryan Bougie, a PointeClaire resident who had offered to help Brennan in January 2011 when he realized Brennan was homeless. Bougie let Brennan sleep in his apartment, but ended up being stabbed 91 times.
Since being declared on Feb. 15, 2012, that he was not criminally responsible for his actions, Brennan has been detained at the Pinel Institute where he was evaluated a few times by the Commission d’examen des troubles mentaux, a tribunal that determines whether patients at Pinel are well enough to leave. Brennan received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia before the court made its ruling in 2012.
On Wednesday, Sûreté du Québec spokesperson Sgt. Ingrid Asselin said Montreal police officers on patrol spotted Brennan walking along a sidewalk in LaSalle around 10 a.m. He was arrested without incident and will be returned to Pinel.
In June, an administrative tribunal based at Pinel determined that the only way he should be allowed to leave the institute was “at least while accompanied by a member of hospital’s personnel.”
In an email exchange with the Montreal Gazette, Julie Benjamin, a spokesperson for the Pinel Institute, wrote that a subsequent decision made by the tribunal on Dec. 19 granted Brennan unescorted leaves. The decision has yet to be made public. Benjamin also wrote that since then, Brennan had taken a series of leaves without incident.
“The patient left alone and did not represent a danger. The leave was supposed to be very short. He did not return at the agreed hour. We then alerted the SQ that he did not return because if this patient does not take his medication, he can become dangerous, to himself and to others,” Benjamin wrote.
The previous decision made in June details how Brennan had escaped from Pinel before, in May 2016, and how it took police 10 days to locate him. He is believed to have abused drugs during those 10 days in 2016 and was seen using marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines after he returned.
During a hearing that led to the decision, a psychiatrist told the tribunal that Brennan was refusing treatment and that his condition had not improved.
“At the moment, we classify the risk to the public (including copatients and hospital staff ) as high. If (Brennan) were not staying in a highly structured, drug-free environment, we believe the risk would be extreme,” the psychiatrist is quoted as saying in the decision made in June. “We therefore suggest that (Brennan) be transferred back to (a section of the institute) on strict detention.”
According to an article published by La Presse in 2012, Brennan told at least one of the two psychiatrists who examined him after he killed Bougie that he believed he was surrounded by actors in a film “like the Truman Show,” the 1998 film starring Jim Carrey in which the main character learns he is the main character in a reality television show. He also said that on the morning he killed Bougie, a television told him to kill the singer David Bowie and he somehow interpreted that as a request to kill Bougie.