VANCOUVER — The lawyer for the man accused of stabbing three people at a Vancouver Chinatown festival says evidence presented at his B.C. Supreme Court trial shows his client should be found not criminally responsible for the attack.
Blair Donnelly has pleaded not guilty to three counts of aggravated assault and attended court today carrying a bible.
He was on unescorted leave from the B.C. Forensic Psychiatric Hospital on Sept. 10, 2023, when two women and a man were injured at the festival.
His lawyer Glen Orris told the judge in closing arguments that both Donnelly and a psychiatrist told the court he had been suffering from religious delusions the day of the stabbings.
Donnelly has admitted the crimes, but Orris says his state of mind at the time is the issue before the court.
Orris says evidence presented at the trial has shown his client was “overwhelmed by the belief that God wanted him to stab people” and, because of that, he believed that his actions were “not wrong in a moral sense.”
Crown counsel Mark Myhre is also expected to deliver his closing arguments Thursday.
The court heard that Donnelly has been diagnosed with schizophrenia — and that the psychiatrist who testified earlier this week had more recently diagnosed him with “schizoaffective disorder bipolar type” — which manifests as religious delusions.
Donnelly had previously been found not criminally responsible for stabbing his daughter to death in 2006, and for a 2017 attack on another psychiatric patient with a butter knife.
The Crown presented its case on the first day of the trial, sharing surveillance video showing Donnelly’s movements the day of the attack, including buying a chisel from Home Depot, travelling to Chinatown and stabbing the victims.
Donnelly testified last week that he had initially planned to bike to a coffee shop in Coquitlam that day, but was “prompted by God to go to Chinatown” to harm people.
He testified that he was mentally and “morally” sick at the time of the stabbings.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2025.
Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press
