News

A man accused of beheading a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus uttered not a word in court Friday and the victim's friends were still at a loss as to how anyone could have attacked someone they say never hurt a soul.

To view this video you need to upgrade your Flash Player

Download Flash Player from the Adobe website.

"There was nothing in the world that could set him off or [make] him do anything wrong to anybody," said William Caron, who knew Tim McLean, 22, since Grade 7.

"As far as I've known him, he'd never got into a single fight in his whole life."

There were no answers from a courtroom in Portage la Prairie, Man., where Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton, made his first court appearance on a charge of second-degree murder.

Mr. Li — his face bruised, one hand bandaged and his legs shackled — quietly shuffled into the room with his head bowed. He did not make eye contact with anyone the entire time he was before the judge.

He would not even reply when the judge asked him if he was going to get a lawyer and only nodded slightly when asked whether he was exercising his right not to speak.

The Crown asked for a psychiatric assessment, but the judge said he wanted to give Mr. Li a chance to talk to a lawyer about that.

"It's early and I think the judge just wants to respect his rights to ... speak to counsel and he's giving him that opportunity," Crown prosecutor Larry Hodgson said outside court. "I don't think it will be very long that they'll allow him to do that [be without a lawyer]."

Mr. Li was charged after Mr. McLean died in a gruesome attack on a Greyhound bus that was travelling from Edmonton to Winnipeg.

Police did not release details about his death. But passengers said the young man died in an appalling attack in which his seat-mate silently stood up and repeatedly stabbed him before severing his head and carving up his body.

Friends say they simply cannot understand why anyone would attack the thin young man, just five-feet, five inches tall, and by all accounts easy-going.

"He was just such an amazing guy. He had a great personality," Mr. McLean's long-time friend and Mr. Caron's wife, Jodi Lang, said on the lawn of their Winnipeg home.

Mr. McLean had been working at carnival booths and was coming home from Edmonton to be with his family. He led a mostly quiet life, preferring to spend time playing cards and the board game Risk, Mr. Caron said.

His friend liked to travel, which was the reason he spent three summers working the carnival circuit, Mr. Caron added.

"He never cared for sitting around, unless it was for a weekend with the guys playing Risk. He was always big on travelling. He didn't like to sit in one place."

Mr. McLean and Mr. Caron got their first tattoos together. Mr. Caron opted for a ghost riding a motorcycle. Mr. McLean chose a joker — a theme he would use for his Myspace web page under the name Jokawild, where he described his interests as "playin vids, chillin', havin a good time."

Mr. Hodgson couldn't offer many details about Mr. Li.

"I know he was from Edmonton. I don't know why he was on the bus. That's still under investigation."

The RCMP said Mr. Li has no known criminal record.

The Edmonton Journal is reporting that Mr. Li worked as a newspaper delivery man, delivering the Journal, Edmonton Sun and the National Post. When he did not show up for work on Tuesday, his colleague called his cellphone and a woman who said she was Mr. Li's wife called back, saying he was called on an emergency.

Mr. Hodgson said if Mr. Li doesn't get his own lawyer, the court could appoint one or the case could proceed anyway.

Mr. Li's next court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday in Portage la Prairie.

Meanwhile, tributes to the victim were pouring into social networking and media websites. A Facebook website called "R.I.P. Tim" quickly sprang up after news of the attack.

"I can't believe this is happening," wrote Leah Dryburgh of Winnipeg. "Tim, you were the best guy ever. You didn't deserve this at all."

It was on Tuesday night that Greyhound bus 1170 rolled across the darkening prairie. Passengers were dozing off as The Legend of Zorro played on the television screen.

A man of about 20, making his way home to Manitoba from Edmonton, was sitting on his own in the back row, headphones covering his ears, sleeping with his cheek resting on the window pane.

He barely acknowledged the 40-year-old man in sunglasses who, having boarded the bus in Brandon, first sat near the front, then walked down the aisle, slid his bags into the overhead bin, and sat down next to him.

The strangers sat together in silence for a half hour or more, said Garnet Caton, a 26-year-old seismic driller who was in the row ahead.

Then the calm of an otherwise unremarkable bus ride was shattered by a sound so chilling it could only be described as somewhere between a dog howling and a baby crying.

"It was a blood-curdling scream," he said. "I turned around and the guy sitting right [behind] me was standing up and stabbing another guy with a big Rambo knife … Right in the throat. Repeatedly."

Mr. Caton said the attack was utterly unprovoked.

He watched in horror as the man, described as tall and well-built with close-cropped hair, plunged his hunting knife into the victim eight or nine times, sending blood spraying across the back of the bus.

The driver, hearing the screams, pulled to the side of the road and opened the doors, allowing passengers to flee. They scrambled over one another and, in their haste, knocked an elderly woman to the floor. One mother, who was seated near the back, threw her toddler forward several rows to get the child away from danger, a witness said.

Mr. Caton, who served five years in the Canadian Forces and was closest to the attacker, paused before leaving, torn momentarily between concern for his own safety and the thought of abandoning the bleeding victim. He turned to another man nearby and asked for his help.

"I said, 'Give me a hand and let's get this guy.' And the other guy took off," he said.

It was only moments later that the victim's screams went silent. Mr. Caton knew he was too late.

Mr. Caton jumped off the bus, and was met by a trucker who had stopped after seeing the commotion. The trucker grabbed a crowbar and Mr. Caton got a hammer and they tried to contain the attacker on the bus. The attacker swung his knife at them through the partially closed bus door.

Then the incident became even more macabre. The attacker returned to the victim's side and began sawing through his neck. A few moments later, he walked to the front of the bus holding a decapitated human head, displaying it to the 34 passengers and the bus driver standing outside.

"I got sick after I saw the head thing," Mr. Caton said. "Some people were puking, some people were crying, some people were shocked."

The killer, meanwhile, appeared unfazed.

"He just looked at us and dropped the head on the ground, totally calm," Mr. Caton said.

Reports from the scene indicate the man then ate pieces of the corpse.

It was at that point that the RCMP arrived and a standoff developed, with armed officers surrounding the bus.

For more than three hours the man taunted police, moving around the bus and cutting away at the corpse. Around 1:30 a.m. local time, he broke a window and tried to jump out but was quickly arrested.

At the scene Staff Sergeant Steve Colwell could offer no explanation for what prompted the attack, and had no information on whether the attacker was known to police or had a history of violence or instability.

Police did not release the victim's name because they had not been able to notify his family. But CTV reported Friday that his family learned of the attack through the media.

Police praised the reaction of the bus driver and passengers, which they say may have averted further injuries.

"They were very brave. They reacted swiftly and calmly in exiting the bus and as a result nobody else was injured," Staff Sgt. Colwell said. "It's not every day that someone gets stabbed on a bus. I imagine it would be fairly traumatic for the other passengers on the bus and the way they reacted was extraordinary."

The passengers were eventually taken to an RCMP station in Brandon to be questioned, and then put up for the night in a local hotel. Most stayed up late, bleary-eyed strangers gathering in small groups, talking through a horrifying event that defied rational explanation.

"I tried to lay down at 4 o'clock this morning and I was up 10 minutes later, because every time I close my eyes I see this man in the window with some guy's head I just smoked a cigarette with an hour before," said passenger Cody Olmstead, who was on his way home to Nova Scotia.

Mr. Olmstead may have been the last person to speak to the victim before he was killed. He said they exchanged pleasantries, but not much more. The young man, who was about 5 foot 8 and 150 pounds, was dressed in baggy, hip-hop clothing, passengers said.

"He seemed to be all right. I didn't get to know him," he said. "He just told me where he was going. I told him where I was going."

At first, Mr. Olmstead said, he thought it was a regular fistfight. But when somebody yelled "knife," everyone started to run.

"What can you do when a man's got a knife the size of, you know, it's a big knife. So we just tried to stay out of the way," he said.

He said he didn't notice any tension between the two men beforehand, or even a minor incident that could have sparked a confrontation.

"No, there was no tension. The guy got on the bus, sat down beside the fellow. The fellow offered him the seat, woke up, said, 'Yeah, go ahead,' fell back asleep. Next thing you know, he's getting stabbed repetitively," he said. "And then I guess he cuts buddy's head off, and he walks up to the door, holds the head in the door and just looks at him, crazy like, and just drops the head."

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called Thursday's incident horrific and said his heart goes to the family of the victim. However, he played down the possibility of enacting tough security measures in Canada's bus terminals, similar to what exists in airports.

"People should always be open to looking at precautionary measures. But let's keep in mind that as bizarre and tragic as this is, it is extremely rare," Mr. Day said.

He also dismissed talk by some opposition MPs of a "knife registry," saying that millions of them are bought each year simply for kitchen use. He added that there are already provisions in the Criminal Code against crimes and assaults.

Speaking at a Conservative Party caucus meeting, Mr. Day said he does not want to jeopardize the investigation, but added he wants to see the killer "convicted in court."

Grief counsellors from the Brandon Regional Health Authority were made available to the passengers at the hotel Wednesday night. They were eventually allowed to complete their journey to Winnipeg, even though all their possessions had to be left on the bus while police continued their search of the crime scene.

Greyhound paid for them to buy clothes Thursday, and later transported them into Winnipeg, where some were reunited with anxious family members late in the afternoon.

The bus remained parked at the side of the Trans-Canada Highway Thursday, about 20 kilometres west of Portage La Prairie, as forensic teams sifted through evidence.

With reports from Joe Friesen in Winnipeg and Daniel Leblanc in Lévis, Que.

View Larger Map