He had sent text messages to family saying how much he was looking forward to seeing them.Īs he dozed on the bus, a man took a seat beside him. The 22-year-old had been returning to Winnipeg following a stint on the road. "His love of his friends was easy to see". Tim McLean, a travelling carnival worker, loved making new friends on his many journeys, said his uncle.īut "he never left behind the ones he made in high school," McLean said. His uncle, Alex McLean, told people who attended the funeral service that his nephew was "friendly, kind, sweet and caring." The funeral took place Saturday afternoon at a Winnipeg church. “Everything about this bothers me,” said de Delley.About 600 people turned out to say farewell to Tim McLean, the 22-year-old Winnipeg man murdered in a bizarre attack aboard a Greyhound bus. With the Criminal Code Review Board expected to make a decision by the end of the week, Li - now Will Baker - could be enjoying his anonymity in short order. So why does Canada allow it, when other countries, like Australia, have started cracking down and banning the practice? Landlords are left in the dark and most employers too, and that’s before you even start to consider neighbours, hockey teams and the like. In those provinces, a criminal using a new name still has the old criminal record attached, because the fingerprints are sent to the RCMP and run through the database, to search for past convictions.įor other provinces, a new name means a whole new start - and in any case, unless you start a job where criminal background check is required, a new name anywhere in Canada serves as a fast and easy break from dirty deeds that came before. Though it’s become harder in recent years to simply change your name as an easy way of disconnecting from a checkered past, fingerprints are only required in certain provinces, including Alberta, B.C., Ontario, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and PEI. Not fair? Tell that to Tim McLean, the innocent victim of Li’s lapse in mind and judgement, killed just because he smiled at Li and asked how he was doing. It would seem like the easiest fix in the world, to simply stop the killers, rapists and pedophiles of this country from legally changing their names - and though Li was found not criminally responsible for the life he took, ongoing concerns about his stability mean Vince Li is the name this killer should always be stuck with. “He’ll be looking for a job and a place to live, and he’ll be hiding under a name change, and it’ll be really easy to disappear,” said de Delley.Īnd once again, Canada should be asking why it is. ![]() That’s independent living, plus whole new name, for the man described by doctors as a model patient. Now the man who took McLean’s life in a psychotic breakdown wants to live on his own, with daily monitoring to ensure he takes his anti-schizophrenia medication, which is supposed to reduce the likelihood of any follow-up rampage. Li was originally kept in the secure wing at Manitoba’s Selkirk Mental Health Centre, but the 47-year-old former delivery driver was allowed to move into a group home last year. On Monday, Li appeared before a Criminal Code Review Board under his new name, with a request to leave his group home and live independently for the first time since his rampage on the Trans-Canada Hwy. There’s been nothing fair about any of this.”ĭe Delley is the mother of Tim McLean, the victim of that horrifying bus beheading, a murder for which Li, a schizophrenic, was found not criminally responsible. “I don’t think he should be out in the community at all, but when he can just change his name, hiding and disappearing from the public eye is going to be that much easier,” said Carol de Delley, speaking from her home in Winnipeg. Like Karla Homolka, Graham James and David Shearing before him, Li simply applied to change his name, because in Canada, getting a new identity remains your lawful right no matter what you do - and even the most heinous of detainees can swap names at will. There will be no obvious connection between Baker and the man who hacked the head off a fellow passenger while riding a Greyhound bus back in 2008 - because back then, Baker was still named Vince Li. Charles Manson moving in beside you might raise a few red flags Charlie Smith, not so much.Īnd so it will be when Will Baker finds a new home, or a new job.
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