Man decapitated on Greyhound bus in Manitoba

July 31, 2008

According to a Canadian Press report published Thursday and a CNN report Friday, 40-year-old Vince Weiguang Li of Edmonton, Alberta has been arrested for allegedly stabbing and decapitating a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba, Canada on Wednesday night.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has not confirmed a beheading, which witnesses have described to the press, saying only that the suspect allegedly stabbed the victim around 8:30 p.m. CT on a Greyhound bus traveling east on the Trans-Canada Highway about 20 kilometers west of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day described the attack as "horrific" according to Agence France-Presse and "probably one-of-a-kind in Canadian history" according to the Canadian Press.

While the RCMP has not released the victim's name, the Canadian Press and CNN have reported that the deceased is Tim McLean, 22, who had been traveling from Edmonton to Winnipeg, where he lived. Two witnesses described the attack to CBC News: Garnet Caton, who was sitting in the seat in front of the victim, and Cody Olmstead, who smoked a cigarette with the victim just minutes shortly before the attack.

"He must have stabbed him 50 times or 60 times," Caton told CBC News.

Olmstead described the attack: "Like, just everywhere, arms, legs, neck, chest, guts, wherever he could swing it, he got it."

Caton and Olmstead said that the other passengers fled. When the bus driver, a passing trucker and Caton returned to check on the victim, Caton noticed the victim's head was gone. Caton said that the attacker then chased them off the bus. CBC News reported that the suspect tried to drive the bus away from the scene, but the driver disabled the engine. Witnesses have said that the attacker then paraded the removed head from a bus window.

"While we were watching the door, he calmly walks up to the front with the head in his hand and the knife and just calmly stares at us and drops the head right in front of us," Caton told the CBC.

"The guy came to the front of the door with buddy's head in his hands, decapitated. He dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body back up," Olmstead described to the Canadian Press. RCMP arrested the suspect at about 1:30 a.m. local time after a three-hour standoff. As of about 3:00 p.m. Thursday, the Canadian Press reported that the RCMP has not yet questioned the subject and had laid no charges, though he was due Friday morning in the Provincial Court of Manitoba in Portage la Prairie, according to a statement posted on the RCMP web site.

Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh told the Associated Press that 37 passengers were aboard the bus.