A look at notable ‘not criminally responsible’ cases in Canada
A judge has ruled that Pierre Ny St-Amand, 53, was not criminally responsible for the 2023 bus attack on a Laval, Que., daycare that killed two small children and injured six others. Superior Court Justice Éric Downs concluded Ny St-Amand was experiencing psychosis and could not discern right from wrong. He has been ordered detained in a psychiatric hospital.
Here’s a look at some other high-profile Canadian cases in which there was a not criminally responsible finding:
Blair Donnelly stabbed his 16-year-old daughter to death in Kitimat, B.C., in 2006 and was found not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder. The decision drew renewed attention in 2023 when Donnelly was charged with aggravated assault after three people were stabbed at a Vancouver Chinatown festival. He was free on day release from a forensic psychiatric hospital at the time.
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Matthew Raymond shot and killed four people — two civilians and two police officers — from the window of his Fredericton apartment on Aug. 10, 2018. At his trial, evidence was presented that on the day of the shooting, Raymond believed the end of times had arrived and he was surrounded by demons. Crown prosecutors argued Raymond’s delusions were not intense enough to prevent him from understanding that he was shooting humans, and that it was wrong. A jury found Raymond not criminally responsible in 2020.
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Isaac Brouillard Lessard had been found not criminally responsible because of mental illness five times for offences in 2014 and 2018 and was being followed by Quebec’s mental health board. But a coroner’s inquest would later hear he was resistant to treatment and wasn’t following court orders regarding his medication. On March 27, 2023, Brouillard Lessard fatally stabbed provincial police Sgt. Maureen Breau and seriously injured another officer before being shot dead by police in his apartment building in Louiseville, Que.
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Rohinie Bisesar fatally stabbed Rosemary Junor, a complete stranger, in a pharmacy in downtown Toronto on Dec. 11, 2015. In 2018, a judge found that Bisesar was in the throes of a psychotic episode due to untreated schizophrenia at the time of the attack. A psychiatrist concluded Bisesar suffered from severe hallucinations and delusions that manifested as a voice commanding her to harm someone.
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Matthew de Grood was found not criminally responsible for the killings in April 2014 of Zackariah Rathwell, Jordan Segura, Kaitlin Perras, Josh Hunter and Lawrence Hong in Calgary. It was ruled that he was suffering delusions at the time and did not understand his actions were wrong. The university student, who has schizophrenia, went to a party that marked the end of the school year believing the devil was talking to him and a war was about to begin, signalling the end of the world.
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Richard Kachkar stole a snow plow in the early morning of Jan. 12, 2011 and, in the middle of a two-hour rampage with it, hit and killed Toronto police Sgt. Ryan Russell. Witnesses heard him yell about the Taliban, Chinese technology and microchips. He was found not criminally responsible at trial in 2013 and was held in the secure unit of a mental health hospital near Toronto. In 2018, the Ontario Review Board gave Kachkar a conditional discharge.
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Kimberly Noyes told police in 2009 that she had killed a 12-year-old autistic boy with a knife. Noyes, from Grand Forks, B.C., was found not criminally responsible for John Fulton’s death. Medical experts testified that she was bipolar and severely depressed, had gone off her medication and was hearing voices.
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Vincent Li fatally stabbed and beheaded Tim McLean, the young man sleeping next to him on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba, on July 30, 2008. Li told a mental-health advocate he heard the voice of God telling him McLean was an alien who he needed to destroy. Li was found not criminally responsible and was sent to the Selkirk Mental Health Centre. Li saw his privileges expand slowly after his admission to the facility. In February 2016, Li, now known as Will Baker, won the right to eventually move out of a group home and live on his own. In 2017, he was granted an absolute discharge after the board found he did not pose a significant safety threat.
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Glen Race pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Trevor Brewster and second-degree murder of Paul Michael Knott. Race suffered from schizophrenia and was not taking his medication in May 2007 when he lured the Halifax men to their deaths. Court was told Race believed he was a vampire slayer and a godlike entity at the time of the killings. He was found not criminally responsible, based on a joint recommendation from the Crown and the defence.
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Gregory Despres fatally stabbed two elderly neighbours in Minto, N.B., in 2005, decapitating one of them. Despres, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had crossed into the United States after the killings despite guards finding him with a small arsenal including a chainsaw, a sword and brass knuckles. He told them he was an assassin on a military mission. Three psychiatrists diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia and he was found not criminally responsible.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 29, 2025.
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