Man who killed teen to remain in hospital
The man who killed teen Nick Hickey while in a psychotic break will, for the time being, continue to be detained at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, the Ontario Review Board has ruled.
In June, Guillermo Escobedo-Hoyo, 39, was found not criminally responsible by way of a mental disorder for the January 2018 killing.
Hickey, 17, was walking on the sidewalk when Escobedo-Hoyo aimed his car at the teen and ran over him in what doctors said was a psychotic break during a bipolar episode. He then reversed his vehicle and hit a truck, stripped naked and smashed the window of an OC Transpo bus with passengers aboard. He also entered a senior’s home and demanded a gun before Ottawa police found him naked inside a neighbour’s parked Jeep. City police originally charged him with second-degree murder.
A criminal court found Escobedo-Hoyo did not have the state of mind to appreciate what he was doing, let alone know it was legally or morally wrong. Hickey’s family remains devastated by his loss. The boy had been walking to cope with his own struggles with anxiety.
The NCR verdict came with mandatory monitoring by the Ontario Review Board, the sole body that can release a person found not criminally responsible from hospital and back into the community. Escobedo-Hoyo has been living at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, in the secure forensic unit, since the NCR ruling. His first hearing was held at the end of August.
The review board ordered that he remain in the unit. But it has also ordered the hospital to create a program for his “detention in custody and rehabilitation” that would allow him to eventually, and gradually, re-enter the community.
The board has ordered that the hospital develop a plan which, at the hospital’s discretion, would allow Escobedo-Hoyo to leave for appointments or compassionate reasons, to have privileges to roam about the hospital and its grounds — either escorted by staff or indirectly supervised — and to eventually leave the hospital. If that were to occur, he would have to first be supervised by staff. The plan would culminate in having him live at a hospital-approved place in the community.
Police would be notified if any of that were to occur. The hospital can also randomly test Escobedo-Hoyo for drugs and alcohol. He is prohibited from using either, from having any weapons, and from driving a motor vehicle.
His review board hearing previously heard a forensic psychologist continued to have concerns with Escobedo-Hoyo, who immigrated to Canada from Mexico in 2013. He is a lawyer who worked in Canada as a paralegal on a work visa that expired months after his arrest.
Dr. Joel Watts testified that Escobedo-Hoyo knows he has bipolar disorder and accepts he must take medication for the rest of his life but that he remains “closed off,” quiet and “guarded.”
At the time, Watts told the board that if Escobedo-Hoyo continued to show good behaviour and began addictions treatment, he could move to the rehabilitation unit and be discharged into the community within the year.
While Escobedo-Hoyo previously told doctors who assessed him that he wanted to be found not criminally responsible to stay in the country, has since said he prefers to be deported. He can’t be deported while under supervision by the Ontario Review Board. syogaretnam@postmedia.com