A Vancouver man who fatally stabbed his mother and tried to kill an 18-month-old girl has been found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder.
David Siu was charged with the April 2014 second-degree murder of Yin Nor Hsao, 63, and the attempted murder of the girl, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban.
Siu’s mother was stabbed 373 times and the girl 19 times. When police arrived at the family apartment at 3319 Kingsway, they saw the two victims lying on the floor outside the suite.
The accused, whose clothes were covered in blood, could be seen standing in the hallway near the victims, holding a paring knife in an upright position, pointing to the ceiling.
He was swaying from side to side, looking at the two officers in a fashion described by one of the officers as “the thousand-yard stare.”
The officers told him three or four times to drop the knife but he refused to do so. When he turned the tip of the knife towards one of the cops, seeming to move forward or move the knife forward, one of the cops shot him several times.
One bullet also hit the body of the mother but a pathologist determined it was not a contributing cause of death.
At trial, Siu’s father testified that Siu had a history of hospitalization for schizophrenia. Siu took the stand and claimed that three other people, two of them former classmates of his, had been stalking him and had stabbed his mother hundreds of times.
Siu also made a number of clearly delusional claims, including that he was a medical doctor who had attended Harvard University, had won the Nobel Peace Prize and had a home and a fiancée in Boston.
The Crown sought a verdict that Siu had committed the acts he was accused of but that he was not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder.
The judge found that Siu had committed the stabbings and ordered a psychiatric evaluation of the accused.
A psychiatrist found that Siu at the time of the slaying was suffering from severe and chronic schizophrenia and may have been seeing ghosts in the form of people masquerading as his mom and the girl.
Siu was also paranoid about his family, believing that his mother was trying to poison him and that the girl was part of the plot.
In his verdict on the case, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Arne Silverman concluded that Siu was suffering from a mental disorder and that as a result of his mental disorder, he was incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of his acts and of knowing that his actions were wrong.
The judge’s ruling was posted at the court’s website Monday. It was given out orally by the judge on July 14.
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