generalspeaking

Seventeen-year-old Nick Hickey was out the night of January 17, 2018 walking in his neighbourhood. He was an autistic teenager, and he hoped to be able to learn to manage his anxiety and intense behavioural issues through calming himself, exposing himself to the public arena as it were, simply by strolling around the neighbourhood not far from his home as he was wont to do several times a day. As he was doing the night that Guillermo Escobado-Hoyo, 37, who was in Canada on a work visa that expired -- aimed his vehicle directly at the boy, killing him.

The boy was walking along on the sidewalk when Escobedo-Hoyo, a paralegal. aimed his car, running the 17-year-old over in what doctors who later examined the man described as a psychotic break during a bipolar episode. He had smashed his cello at home, then rammed his car into a light standard before killing the boy. After hitting young Hickey, Guillermo Escobedo-Hoyo, reversed his car, hit a truck, then stripped naked and smashed the window of an OC Transpo bus with passengers on board. 

He then entered a senior's home, demanding a gun. A neighbour warned she was going to call 911, and Escobedo-Hoyo recommended she not do that. Soon afterward, an Ottawa police officer found the naked man hiding in a neighbour's parked Jeep. Police homicide detectives charged him with second degree murder. But a criminal court found that Escobedo-Hoyo's state of mind was incapable of realizing what he was doing when he killed the young boy, nor they said, was he capable of distinguishing that this action was morally and legally wrong.

His legal status in Canada was thought to have added to some stress he was experiencing. Though it was two months after the killing rampage that his visa expired, leaving him with no legal status in Canada. An annual Ontario Review Board hearing has decided that the man, released from The Royal Hospital and back to the community, now living independently while under mandatory monitoring by the Board, could be granted travel passes to other parts of the country.

He lives with his father who moved to Ottawa from Mexico and occasionally went on outings to restaurants with his father; those outings reduced since the pandemic. The Crown prosecutor opposed the proposed travel passes. According to his doctor who proposed travel passes to add to his detention order, Escobedo-Hoyo is in frequent contact with a case worker checking on him weekly and he attends an outpatient program at the hospital where he is also given his medication.

Initially Escobedo-Hoya informed doctors assessing him at The Royal he wanted to be deported back to Mexico. Since understanding he could have freedoms under a supervision order he has changed his mind, expressing a desire to remain in Canada. Refugees and Citizenship Canada has issued a removal order even as Escobedo-Hoyo's immigration lawyer is making application for temporary residence since he cannot be deported as long as he is subject to the Ontario Review Board supervision.

As for Nick Hickey's mother, she struggles with what she feels is 'accountability' in the justice process, feeling the criminal justice system has failed her family, and now a process she feels prioritizes her son's killer has let them down further. "Whatever happened in his life, why did it have to affect mine?" she asks of the process. She thinks longingly of her son, what kind of  family he would have had, would she have been a grandmother, and that he would now be in university.

She has no sympathy for Escobedo-Hoyo, her victim impact statement to the board points out her other children struggle with their brother's loss. Her son's killer, she points out, chose to stop taking his medication before killing her son. The letter Escobedo-Hoyo sent to her with his apologies where he spells her last name incorrectly and repeatedly apologizes, means nothing to her, and she gives him no credit for sincerity. Why should she?