A man plagued by deep mental health problems, Abdullah Shaikh, is the author of the three gratuitous homicides that occurred in less than 24 hours in Montreal and Laval this week. The Bureau of Independent Investigations (BEI) will elucidate the circumstances in which he was shot dead by officers from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) on Thursday, in the borough of Saint-Laurent. The Sûreté du Québec (SQ) will investigate the three homicides. The case shouldn’t stop there.
Many disturbing details revealed by the media give the impression that this story is much more than a sad and sordid news story. In less than 24 hours, Tuesday and Wednesday, Abdullah Shaikh killed at close range three victims chosen at random, without any connection between them: André Fernand Lemieux, Mohamed Salah Belhaj and Alex Lévis-Crevier.
According to information released by The Press and The Journal of Montreal, Abdullah Shaikh, 26, had a criminal and hospitalization history, since 2018, for an explosive diagnosis of schizophrenia and narcissistic and antisocial personality traits. Although he refused at times to take his medication, trivialized his disorders and behaviors, was aggressive and had expressed threats, he had nevertheless obtained his release from a mental health care center three times in a row. decisions rendered by the Commission for the Review of Mental Disorders (CETM).
The CETM and the psychiatrists who assessed Shaikh had nevertheless recognized, as recently as last March, that he presented “a significant risk to public safety” and that he could perform “unpredictable and aggressive actions”. When he was released, the CETM had insisted on the importance of Shaikh’s treatment team being able to intervene quickly and effectively if his mental state deteriorated. What happened to this so-called support?
That’s not all. Abdullah Shaikh was charged with assault with a weapon, sexual assault, assault and threats for events that occurred in 2016. For reasons that only the slow and laborious justice of Quebec can explain, his trial was not due to take place before January 2023, in the judicial district of Laval.
Added to these troubling facts is a nagging question. How come such a tormented person could get his hands on a gun?
We are dealing with a case that fully justifies the holding of a public coroner’s inquest. It would make it possible to examine the various institutions which have assessed Shaikh’s dangerousness and which have ensured his medical and judicial care. It is not a question of putting the family on trial, which oscillates between denial and disarray, but of understanding how a time bomb could pass between the meshes of the system.
To those who doubt the usefulness of a public coroner’s inquest, we oppose three innocent victims and the tragedy their families are going through. We recall that Shaikh could have caused dozens of victims had it not been for the speed of the SPVM’s tactical intervention group. We insist on the fact that the mental distress reaches unsuspected depths at the end of the health emergency. We recall that the scarcity of intervention resources and the shortcomings in the care of people in distress have led in the past and will continue to lead to distressing loss of human life, by suicide or homicide.
The Shaikh case highlights the flaws in the system when delinquency and mental health collide, said Josée Rioux, president of the Professional Order of Criminologists of Quebec. In interview at The Press, she was not ready to blame it on the CETM, which has the delicate and difficult task of finding the balance between protecting the public and reintegrating people with mental illness problems. Rather, she deplores the shortcomings in the service offer. “Mental health disorders are the poor relation of delinquency: we don’t know what to do with that,” she says.
The psychiatrist of the Philippe-Pinel Institute Gilles Chamberland explained to QUB the limits within which the CETM intervenes. Unless a person in medical custody poses a serious and imminent danger to society, they should be released, according to Supreme Court guidelines. This does no more service to society than to the patient in denial of his condition.
Respect for individual freedoms comes at a high price when issues of delinquency and mental health collide. Perfect clinical assessment does not exist, nor does zero risk. These pitfalls should not prevent us from conducting a public examination of the institutional failure behind the Shaikh affair. We must do better.