When Pooh happens for real

[ursus arctos]

When Pooh happens for real

That's a very complete story.

The perp has a rather unusual name, and the "knife registry" idea is insane.

[Amor de Cosmos]

When Pooh happens for real

The perp has a rather unusual name

How so?

The "knife registry" idea smacks of spur of the moment "i-need-a-question" from one of the Ottawa hacks at Stockwell Day's Press Conference.

[Anton Gramscescu]

When Pooh happens for real

Except that all the references I've seen to it says that the idea came from an MP (presumably one of the more brain-dead Liberals). Haven't been able to figure out which one though.

[Amor de Cosmos]

When Pooh happens for real

And it's unlikely anyone will be able to I should think.

[ursus arctos]

When Pooh happens for real

Amor, I found the juxtaposition of "Vince" with "Weiguang Li" to be jarring. The US convention among people of Chinese heritage who have also taken "Western" names is to use one or the other, not both, depending on the audience (or to put the Western one in square quotes).

Is that kind of amalgam common in Canada?

[Amor de Cosmos]

When Pooh happens for real

Ah, yes it is a bit unusual, in effect it duplicates his given name. It could be inadvertent, or a transcription error too I suppose.

[Incandenza]

When Pooh happens for real

That was a really good article.

Though I found the mention that the victim was "An aboriginal man" kind of strange. Then again, I don't read about people being aboriginal all that often. Unless I'm mistaken, it's the only mention of someone's race in the article.

[Amor de Cosmos]

When Pooh happens for real

Last night one of the witnesses on TV said the killer was aboriginal or Chinese, he wasn't sure which but that he was quite a large man. Maybe that's where it came from, it seems as though there's some confusion.

[Guest]

When Pooh happens for real

Judging by the photo on the BBC News page, the victim was a white kid and not aboriginal.

This story has been rattling around in my head all day. It's so savage and grim.

[Heliotrope]

When Pooh happens for real

I agree. Sometimes I think it'd have been better for the young guy's identity to have stayed private, to accord him some dignity after such a terrible death, but that was probably never going to happen in the Internet age anyway.

[Ant van Oviedo]

When Pooh happens for real

[Reed John]

When Pooh happens for real

It is just an unbelievably grim story and yet not really that shocking. Mental illness knows no boundaries.

I'm very annoyed whenever politicians stick their nose into stories like this with absurd horseshit like a knife registry. Stuff like this is so unbelievably rare and random. The most constructive thing government can "do about it" beyond what they're already doing is spend more money on mental health research and care, but even with that, shit like this is going to happen now and again.

I thought the story said that the victim was aboriginal and wearing "hip hop" clothes. The suspect is taken to be Chinese because of his name.

One of the stories refers to a military vet on the bus who considered making a move to stop the attack but he couldn't muster any support, so he also retreated. There's probably nothing he could have done, but he probably will be haunted by that moment. I mean, that plus the vision of a guy being eaten like a crayfish by another human, obviously.

My favourite quotes involved the maritimer referring to the deceased as "buddy."

I spotted that too. The quotes in the article are very word-for-word. I didn't know that "buddy" was a Maritime thing. I just know that episode of South Park about Canada on strike where the Canadians repeatedly have the following exchange.
"Hey, Buddy, don't call me Guy.
"Hey Guy, don't call me Buddy."
"Hey Buddy, don't call me Guy."
and so on.

Edmonton to Winnipeg sounds like a brutally long and dull bus ride. That's got nothing to do with the murder. I'm just pointing that out.

[Incandenza]

When Pooh happens for real

I thought the "baggy hip-hop clothes" was also kind of out-of-place in the article, but the quotes and the storytelling qualities make up for it.

[beak]

When Pooh happens for real

Funnily enough I just sat down with the current Private Eye after I'd read about this.

On the second page there's an article about Northumbria Police massaging crime statistics by classing stabbings as "chest injuries". Fair enough, but they go on to sneer at a senior officer for describing two men getting murdered in a bedsit, with one of them suffering more than a hundred injuries as an "isolated incident".

Surely cases like this - meaning, not just your bog standard knife crime/assault/murders, but acts of a much greater degree with viciousness - are quite isolated.

[Amor de Cosmos]

When Pooh happens for real

I thought the story said that the victim was aboriginal and wearing "hip hop" clothes. The suspect is taken to be Chinese because of his name.

It does now (though, like Inca, I fail to see the relevance of his ethnicity.)

Sometimes I think it'd have been better for the young guy's identity to have stayed private.

Yes, especially as his family found out via the media. I think the RCMP ought to have been able to contact them sooner than they did.

The suspect, now being called Vince Li by CBC, has refused to say a word in court. No one's even sure whether he can speak English, though they assume he can as he communicated with the police on the bus yesterday evening.

[ursus arctos]

When Pooh happens for real

I just wanted to say that I really appreciated the "word for word" nature of the quotes in the G&M piece. A US paper would never have gone to that much trouble; it would have been cut and paraphrased (and still in quotation marks).

[Reed John]

When Pooh happens for real

AP style says that quotes should not be altered to correct grammar nor should they use abnormal spellings to conveny regiouanl dialects.

It depends on what the point of it is. If I'm talking to a CEO about last quarter's results and he gives you incomplete sentences because he's speaking extemporaneously, I try to clean it up a bit so that he doesn't look inarticulate in print.

But a story like this is trying to capture as much detail as possible to create a vivid (althouth hopefully not lurid) picture of the scene. Since its such a unique and bizarre incident, at this point there's no way to know what details are important or not, so the writers are just throwing in everything they can learn.

I think that's why they mentioned the ethnicity. However, in the picture that kid doesn't look especially aboriginal. He looks like every single NHL draft pick from the WHL.

The part of the story that is very fuzzy is the stand-off between the police - Mounties, I guess, although they probably weren't wearing their red uniforms - and the suspect. They say he moved around the bus taunting the cops before they managed to apprehend him.

I don't know how it is in Canada, but I know from watching TV that in the U.S., brandishing a knife at somebody may be considered tantamount to pointing a gun at them, in which case the cops may shoot to kill.

The Mounties carry guns, don't they?

[ursus arctos]

When Pooh happens for real

I agree that the ethnicity and clothing details are there for that reason (and perhaps in a misguided attempt to humanize the victim), but know from experience that the AP style guide is ignored in the breach (I wrote some stuff for AP 25 years ago, when they were much better than they are now).

My reading of the timeline is that the RCMP got there after the guy was very much dead.

[Reed John]

When Pooh happens for real

The victim was dead, but if the guy was waving the knife at bystanders or threating to charge at one of the cops, they could drop him. At least, that's how it is on COPS.

[Amor de Cosmos]

When Pooh happens for real

If they thought their lives were being threatened then they could fire. But it would be a tough call as he was inside the bus and they were outside, at least until he gave himself up and was apprehended. A knife, however large, couldn't penetrate the bus and harm anyone outside I don't think. Besides the RCMP only shoot people when there's no one looking, the rest of the time they use tasers.

[Reed John]

When Pooh happens for real

I've read it again and it says that he was moving "around" the bus taunting the cops. I now see that this means he was moving around inside the bus, and then tried to go out a window. A guy trying to move through a bus window isn't in a position to threaten anyone. So now I understand.

I thought he was circumambulating the bus waving the knife around.

[Anton Gramscescu]

When Pooh happens for real

Aboriginal facial features aren't homogeneous. Some look "white". Some look almost chinese (hence some confusion initially about the ethnicity of the killer, I think). Although with the name "Tim McLean", which is not at all Aboriginal, I suspect he was adopted.

Technically, Li did not give himself up. Police tried to talk him out for about four hours, at which point he kicked out a window, jumped out and tried to escape on foot. He only got about fifty feet before he was tackled and wrestled to the ground.

[Reed John]

When Pooh happens for real

I've noticed that most indigenous people don't look particularly "Indian" and lots of them have names like Chris Simon, not Dakota Running Bear or whatever.

They didn't chase him down on horseback did they? Cos' that would be sort of cool.

[Incandenza]

When Pooh happens for real

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

Technically, Li did not give himself up. Police tried to talk him out for about four hours, at which point he kicked out a window, jumped out and tried to escape on foot. He only got about fifty feet before he was tackled and wrestled to the ground.

Only got fifty feet? The police presumably are all around the bus, the guy kicks out a window, jumps out, and still managed to get fifty feet before being caught. I know he had a knife and was obviously a threat to everyone, but that seems like a far way to get in that situation.

Also seems like one situation where Tasering a guy seems completely within reason.

[Amor de Cosmos]

When Pooh happens for real

Reed, you really need to visit Canada one day. We have running water and flush toilets too.