Twelve years in prison were imposed on Friday on an autistic and intellectually disabled man who was inspired by violent videos to fatally grab a randomly selected cyclist and pedestrian, at a time when he had stopped taking his medication.
On September 7, 2020, Radoslav Guentchev left his residence driving the family car. He was then angry with his father, who had just reprimanded him for a trivial matter of hygiene.
It was then that he began to ruminate on the idea of hitting someone, as in the videos he had already watched on the Internet, in which individuals randomly grab passers-by.
When he passed a cyclist on Niagara Street in Brossard, he accelerated and hit him head-on. He then fled and continued to circulate, despite his shattered windshield. Three minutes later, he drove straight at a pedestrian who was walking along Boulevard Pelletier, then continued on his way without slowing down.
The victim, Huiping Ding, died soon after. The cyclist, Gérard Chong Soon Yuen, succumbed to his injuries 13 days later. They were completely unknown to the accused and had the misfortune to cross his path at that precise moment.
“Explosive”
At the time of this disastrous trip, Radoslav Guentchev had stopped taking his antipsychotic medication for months. This made him “explosive and aggressive”, according to his mother.
With autism spectrum disorder, recurrent psychotic disorder and mild intellectual disability, he had difficulty managing his emotions and understanding social interactions, psychiatrist Louis Morissette explained Friday at the Longueuil courthouse. . The medication helps him to contain himself better.
First charged with unpremeditated murder, he pleaded guilty on Friday to reduced charges of manslaughter, because of his “significant problems”.
“For people who have an autism spectrum disorder, the difficulty is to clearly perceive the consequences for others of what they are going to subject them to,” added another psychiatrist, Sylvain Faucher.
According to the latter, the accused was then “too preoccupied with his anger” and “inspired” by violent videos of individuals who hit others with their vehicle”, but he surely knew that the victims would be in pain.
Yet he had no intention of killing them, insisted the Dr Morissette.
” In [les vidéos], people are not dead. But in real life, it’s something else. His decision was not considered with the mind of a normal person, his judgment was impaired,” he explained.
Other entanglements
The 32-year-old defendant has in the past twice been found not criminally responsible, in connection with charges of stalking and uttering threats.
He then had to receive his medication by injection.
However, in July 2019, the Mental Disorders Commission released him, finding him stable and able to take his own medication.
However he did not. And at the end of his prison term, he could again refuse to take his medication. But he intends to follow the directives of his doctors, he assured.
Regrets
“I really apologize a lot, I’m sorry, and I’m going to take my medication until the end of my life,” he told Superior Court Judge François Dadour on Friday.
The latter endorsed the joint suggestion of 12 years of detention submitted by Mr.e Marie-Josée Thériault of the Crown and Rémi Cournoyer-Quintal of the defence. Detained since his arrest, he has almost 9 years left to serve.
The accused, who held a valid driver’s license at the time of the tragedy, will no longer be able to drive a motor vehicle for life.