Warning: This story contains graphic details that may be distressing to some readers.
A man who pleaded not guilty in a Vancouver machete attack where one person lost two fingers should be found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder, a provincial court judge heard July 27.
Ibrahim Abdela Bakhit appeared before Vancouver Provincial Court Judge Jennifer Oulton on charges of attempted murder, three counts of aggravated assault, one count of assault with a weapon encompassing events involving several firefighters and one each of arson and possession of incendiary materials.
Forensic psychiatrist Johann Brink told the judge that Bakhit has schizophrenia and did not have the capacity to know what he was doing was morally wrong.
Brink has interviewed Bakhit several times and has produced two reports.
The charges stem from an Aug. 6, 2022, incident where a man allegedly lit his Granville Street SRO room ablaze before attacking four people with a machete and stabbing them, leaving them, police said, with life-altering injuries.
The court heard a security guard was cut the from ear to jaw. The firefighters backed away, Bakhit in pursuit with the machete. The firefighters were brandishing a pry bar and firefighting axes as they retreated.
A woman then emerged from her room and Bakhit turned on her, severing three fingers, one of which was re-attached in hospital. She also suffered severed tendons.
Alerted by the woman’s screams, another tenant emerged from his room. Bakhit attacked him with the machete in the left arm and cut it to the bone.
The court heard another tenant awoke, entered the hallway and saw severed fingers on the floor.
Bakhit then hit him in the back of the head with the machete, held the machete at his throat and threatened to kill him.
He had also set fire to his suite.
Firefighters had to back out of the building when faced by Bakhit, and police ultimately Tasered him and shot him in the leg.
Under questioning from Crown prosecutor Jenny Dyck, Brink told Oulton, "there was clear evidence of psychosis" when he interviewed Bakhit. And, he said Bakhit should be found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder.
Brink said Bakhit believed people in his building were using black magic to influence him. Specifically, the he believed black magic was being fed under his door with music from his neighbour’s room.
Brink stressed he had to determine if there were any cultural linkages in the situation, with Bakhit being a Sudanese refugee. He determined there were not.
Brink told the judge Bakhit believed he was seeing people from his past in his dreams, and that he would them walking past his open room door. He also believed shadowy figures were attempting to lure him back to his Muslim faith.
The fire came about because Bakhit decided his clothes weren’t his clothes and set them alight.
Brink found Bakhit had thought disorders, hallucinations, and delusions and diminished functioning, symptoms of schizophrenia.
Brink said Bakhit had been in Calgary’s Foothills Hospital in 2009 and had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.
“He was discharged on no medication, which is really strange to me,” Brink said.
