generalspeaking

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Rehabilitating a Reluctant Bi-polar Killer

"[Escobedo-Hoyo accepts his bipolar disorder diagnosis, knows he must accept medication but he remains] closed off, [quiet and] guarded."
"Given his legal training and legal knowledge he might be a little bit more aware of legal strategy and how to present himself at times."
"He's guarded because he's being strategic [wishing to present himself in] the most positive light possible."
"It's difficult for us [medical staff involved in his medical protocol] to know what he really thinks. He has an illness that will require active medication management for the rest of his life."
"[He says he doesn't want to use [illegal drugs] substances again but that's a] superficial answer [and] it's hard to know if he'll do what he says."
Dr. Joel Watts, forensic psychiatrist, Royal Ottawa Hospital


Nick Hickey was walking down the sidewalk of his Bells Corners neighbourhood	in January 2018 when he was struck and killed by a car. The driver of that car, Guillermo Escobedo-Hoyo, was found not criminally responsible Friday. (Supplied)

In other words, a belligerent man who is quite aware that he suffers from a malignant mental illness whose effects can send him into random psychosis where he will commit violently lethal acts against perfect strangers will not commit to the kind of ongoing treatment that includes mood stabilizers and anti-psychotic medication. He will not, in effect, take responsibility for his condition, much less what that condition spells in danger to the general public.

He is not open with the medical staff attempting to guide him toward a place of moderate balance to enable him to get on with his life, and they are left in a limbo of puzzled expectation. As such, he remains a potential threat to society. He was just such a threat when he deliberately and with a malice that justice ascribes to a mental condition, took the life of a 17-year-old Nick Hickey just walking in his neighbourhood in 2018, when he was lethally rammed by a car driven by Guillermo Escobedo-Hoyo.

The boy was striding along the sidewalk when Escobedo-Hoyo aimed his vehicle directly toward the boy and ran him over, reversed, hit a truck, stripped naked and then smashed an OC Transpo bus window with terrified passengers watching from within, going on to invade the home of a senior where he demanded a gun, and was finally located when police discovered him inside a neighbour's parked Jeep. Nick Hickey's ribs, brain stem and spinal cord had been crushed; he died almost immediately from blunt force trauma.

This man's state of mind precluded his knowing what he was doing, according to a finding by a criminal court. He had no idea what he was doing was legal, or that it represented a horrific moral crime. The man has a law degree. He left his native Mexico for Canada, claiming he needed refuge, he was escaping an unstable and dangerous hometown. His family, on the other hand, has a different viewpoint, that the area is entirely safe. In Canada since 2013, he had a work visa to allow him to be employed as a paralegal.

Dr. Watts's concern is that if Escobedo-Hoyo were to abruptly refrain from taking his medication he might once again exhibit bipolar symptoms in the passage of a few days. And to exacerbate the situation, if he decided to begin again using drugs as he had in the past, the symptoms of psychosis would be bumped forward. The medical professionals at the hospital would like the man to begin addiction treatment.

This would move him forward to a rehabilitation unit where he could be discharged into the community in the space of a year. Escobedo-Hoyo informed the doctors who assessed his condition and diagnosed him as not criminally responsible that this was the diagnosis he wanted to be enabled to remain in Canada. He has since changed his mind; confined to being held at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, he prefers to be deported back to Mexico.

But the Catch-22 is that as long as he is subject to the supervision of the Ontario Review Board he must remain in Canada. The alternative is to hold him accountable for murdering Nick Hickey, setting aside the agreement that he was not criminally responsible due to mental illness. A mental illness he appears to be satisfied that he can live with without resorting to the kind of remedial holding treatment that mental health experts know will keep his tendency to violence in check.

The family and the mother of 17-year-old Nick Hickey await justice. They would have found a remote comfort in a sincere expression of remorse on the part of this man with the ample ego, but no space for compassion or concern for the welfare of others.