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Man who killed 'best and only friend' in Vancouver alley not criminally responsible

A file photo shows a statue inside the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, B.C. A file photo shows a statue inside the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, B.C.
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Warning: This story contains disturbing details.

A man who stabbed his friend to death in a Vancouver alley was experiencing a paranoid delusion that the victim had poisoned his milk, the B.C. Supreme Court heard in a tragic case that resulted in the killer being found not criminally responsible.

John Huang had been suffering a psychotic episode and "lacked the capacity to know the moral wrongfulness of his actions," according to a report from a psychiatrist who assessed him after the attack.

The court heard Huang showed up at the home Damien Leung shared with his common-law partner and her three children on the night of Nov. 14, 2020, and tried to enter through multiple locked doors.

Leung told his partner he was going for a smoke, put on a sweater, and went outside to meet Huang. The men proceeded to walk into the back alley, where Huang pulled out a knife and stabbed Leung repeatedly in the torso.

In his March 7 decision, which was recently posted online, Justice Andrew Mayer described the victim as "Mr. Huang's friend, and perhaps his best and only friend." 

The two had met the previous year, when Leung and his partner were living at a Vancouver motel where Huang worked as a front desk clerk. The men become close, and often met for meals.

But the court heard Huang one day became convinced – wrongly – that Leung had somehow poisoned milk he bought during one of their outings.

"During the early morning hours of Nov. 14, 2020, Mr. Huang placed a number of calls, some unanswered, to Mr. Leung's cellphone," Mayer wrote.

"Mr. Huang told Mr. Leung that voices in his head had told him that Mr. Leung had spiked his milk, and that Mr. Leung was lying. Mr. Leung had not spiked Mr. Huang's milk."

Two different psychiatrists, identified in the decision as Dr. Lacroix and Dr. Tomita, provided expert opinions diagnosing the killer with schizophrenia. The court heard Huang likely suffered from his condition for years, but that his symptoms had been escalating leading up to the attack.

After stabbing his friend, Huang paced back and forth on a nearby sidewalk until police arrested him. He had several deep cuts to his fingers that were bleeding profusely, but "expressed no pain or discomfort" as he was being bandaged by first responders, Mayer wrote.

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder that can cause delusions and hallucinations, and leave people unable to distinguish between "real and unreal experiences," according to the American Psychiatric Association. While there is no cure, symptoms can be treated with antipsychotic medications.

It's unclear whether Huang was ever diagnosed or put on those medications prior to his arrest, despite a number of troubling prior incidents.

The court did hear that in 2019, his family doctor referred him to a psychiatrist, who learned about some of his delusions from family members and "queried a possible diagnosis of psychosis NOS (not otherwise specified)."

On the morning of the stabbing, Huang was also taken to hospital after telling his father about the voices he was hearing. He then told staff he was experiencing "racing thoughts, auditory hallucinations, insomnia and shortness of breath," according to Mayer's decision.

"The doctor who examined Mr. Huang at this time, who was not a psychiatrist, found that he did not present with obvious signs of suicidal or homicidal ideation, and he was not referred to a psychiatrist or certified under the Mental Health Act," the judge wrote.

Mayer accepted the expert opinions presented at trial and found the killer not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder. He ordered that Huang be sent to the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam pending a hearing with the B.C. Review Board.

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