The man accused of stabbing three people at a festival in Vancouver’s Chinatown two years ago has pleaded not guilty.
Blair Donnelly, clad in a dark-coloured sweat suit and orange rubber sandals, entered the plea to three counts of aggravated assault as his trial began at the Vancouver Supreme Court on Monday.
In his opening statement, Crown prosecutor Mark Myhre told the judge-alone trial that Donnelly had admitted to stabbing three people at the end of the Light Up Chinatown festival on Sept. 10, 2023.
He said the only question to adjudicate was whether Donnelly was criminally liable, or whether he was not criminally responsible by way of a mental disorder (NCRMD).
Myhre told the court that Donnelly had been allowed to leave the Colony Farm Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam on an unescorted day pass for a bike ride in Port Coquitlam on the day of the attack.
Video evidence shows that Donnelly instead went to a Home Depot where he bought a wood chisel, then rode a SkyTrain to Stadium Station in Vancouver, he told the court.
The court heard that Donnelly proceeded to the nearby festival, where he locked up his bike then stabbed two women in the back and a man in the forearm.
Video shows he then fled to East Hastings, where he was arrested, Myhre told the court.
Police at the scene said Donnelly was “discombobulated and walking slowly while sweating profusely,” and was in possession of the chisel, the court heard.
Myhre said the “live issues” to be determined at trial are not whether Donnelly has a mental illness, which he does, but whether he “was suffering from the illness on that day.”
Donnelly’s defence has yet to present its theory of events.
A report by former Abbotsford police chief Bob Rich commissioned after the attack concluded that that while Donnelly had been let out of his psychiatric hospital 99 times without incident in the years prior, an attack like the one that occurred was “more likely to occur at some point than not.”
It also highlighted Donnelly’s history of violence, including how in 2009, while on an unescorted day pass, he stabbed another man and was convicted of assault.
He subsequently went eight years without any incidents but attempted to assault another patient at Colony Farm in 2017, the report states. He was charged in that incident but found again to be NCRMD the following year.