No jail for stabbing sister
B.C. youth gets probation for horror film-inspired attack
Fa mi l y described the boy as a “good and happy child,” a middle-schooler of “gentle demeanour”, with no drug problems and no mental health issues. He was a talented drummer, a dedicated soccer player and an allaround “loving and considerate person” who took care of his younger sister.
This made it all the more shocking when he tried to stab the girl to death in their Prince George, B.C., home.
The sister had been calmly getting ready for school when Tim — not his real name — “suddenly, and without any provocation” began plunging a large kitchen knife into her back.
The girl, only a child at the time, was slashed on her back, arms, hands, legs and face as she desperately fled the attack.
Only by escaping from the house and flagging down a school bus was she able to receive medical attention for the wounds that, given only a few more minutes, would almost certainly have killed her.
It was a terrifying scene right out of a horror movie and, indeed, that was the point. As a blood-splattered Tim would soon tell police, he had pinched the idea from the film Halloween.
Tim pleaded guilty to attempted murder f or the September 2013 attack. In a recent decision, a B.C. judge decided he would receive no jail time — even as the judge openly mused he might very well try to kill again.
“Is he just a confused and troubled youth who acted on a fantasy induced by watching and re-watching a movie or is he a yet-to-be-diagnosed sociopath who will act violently again if the opportunity presents itself ?” reads a recent decision by B.C. provincial court Judge Michael Brecknell.
“Only time will answer that troubling question.”
Halloween, released in 1978, centres on Michael Myers, an escaped psychiatric patient who systematically murders the occupants of an Illinois home.
However, the film’s opening scene shows a six-yearold Myers killing his sister by stabbing her in the back.
As court documents noted, Tim had watched the stabbing scenes “over and over again” in the months before the attack.
“It was not a spontaneous ill-informed reaction to a set of circumstances,” Brecknell wrote.
“(Tim) formulated a plan, enhanced by his repetitive watching of a certain movie, to act on his anger towards his family members.”
Tim and his sister lived in a broken home. Their parents separated when Tim was seven, and as a child he had often witnessed verbal and physical abuse between them.
One time, the fighting got so bad police and officials with the Ministry of Children & Family Development were called.
“As a result of that incident, (Tim) was referred to and attended the Children Who Witness Violence Program,” according to court documents.
Aside from that, he showed almost no warning signs. He didn’t run with a rough crowd, he did well at school and is described as a hard worker.
Even after the attempted murder, he said his memory of the crime was somewhat vague and expressed concern for his gravely injured sister.
As for motives, all Tim said was his sister “annoyed him from time to time,” court documents say. He had originally fantasized about killing his father, but chose his sibling when his dad wasn’t home.
Psychiatrists and mental health officials all reported a failure to identify a “genesis or catalyst of (Tim’s) criminal behaviour,” and none were able to say whether he is a risk of doing it again.
The boy’s only punishment is three years of probation, under which he will be subject to more than 30 conditions.
“It may be difficult for members of the general public to understand how a person, no matter their age, who came within moments of killing another person, could even be considered to receive punishment that does not include a term of imprisonment,” Brecknell wrote in his Sept. 30 decision.
Although jail time would be legally “defendable” and wouldn’t interfere with any rehabilitation programs, Brecknell concluded it was “not necessary or appropriate.”
As for the sister Tim tried to kill and the father he had wanted to kill, the court said it didn’t have enough information to make any sentencing arrangements that might assure their “future safety.”
The Prince George stabbing is not the first time that a horror movie has inspired someone to carry out an act of brutal violence.
In 2004, British paranoid schizophrenic Daniel Gonzalez murdered four people, citing inspiration from the movie Nightmare on Elm Street.
The movie Scream inspired the 1998 murder of a 37-yearold Los Angeles woman by her son and nephew.
“They admitted to homicide investigators that they killed the mother after getting the idea from the movies,” Sheriff ’s Sgt. Robert Stoneman told the Los Angeles Times.