UWaterloo stabber may have had psychotic break in weeks before attack: psychologist

A man who stabbed a professor and two students in a University of Waterloo gender studies class last year appeared to be in a “downward spiral of functioning” and may have experienced a psychotic break in the weeks before the attack, a psychologist told his sentencing hearing Wednesday.

Geovanny Villalba-Aleman’s mental health deteriorated after he came to Canada as an international student, in part because he was ill-equipped to cope with the academic demands and other pressures placed on him, said Smita Vir Tyagi, who recently assessed him as part of the sentencing process.

He described his state of mind in the spring of 2023 as marked by intense depression, disorganized thinking and possibly mania, and reported not sleeping well or having meaningful contact with others after the school term ended and shifts at his campus part-time job dwindled, she said.

To fill the time, Villalba-Aleman spent “hours and hours” online and had no one around him to question his views, she said.

“He was living with his own thoughts with no other challenge, pursuing information that came up on the internet, you know, through Reddit threads and so on and so forth,” she said.

Get breaking National news

For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.

Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Under cross-examination from the Crown, the psychologist said she could only extrapolate that Villalba-Aleman may have experienced a psychotic break based on the information he shared during the assessment. There would be no way to confirm it unless he received treatment at the time, she said.

The purpose of the psychological assessment is not “to ascribe responsibility to one or the other factor,” but rather to explain his state of mind leading up to the attack, she added.

Villalba-Aleman has pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault, one count of assault with a weapon and one count of assault causing bodily harm in the June 2023 attack that wounded three people.

Federal prosecutors have said they are seeking a sentence of 16 years for the offences, which they argue constitute terrorist activity in this case.

Federal prosecutor Althea Francis said a sentence in the upper range is appropriate not only because Villalba-Aleman wanted to send a message about his views, but also because he sought to make those with different beliefs feel unsafe.

“He chose his target to highlight that … peaceful discourse at a university, at an institution of higher learning, was not safe, that it should be a place of insecurity, a place one should hesitate to attend because of the possibility of such violence,” she said.

Francis also suggested Villalba-Aleman’s prospects for rehabilitation are “questionable” because while he has taken responsibility for his actions, “his ideological views remain the same.”

Ontario Court Justice Frances Brennan noted Villalba-Aleman is entitled to his beliefs.

“The court here is not to sentence his views,” the judge said. “I am here to sentence his conduct and I am here to assess the risk he poses to the community.”

On Tuesday, the federal Crown argued that Villalba-Aleman’s statement to police, and a manifesto that was found on his phone, show his actions were motivated by ideology and meant to intimidate a segment of the population.

A video of his statement to police was shown in court earlier in the sentencing hearing, which began Monday and is expected to continue all week.

In the video, Villalba-Aleman told police he felt colleges and universities were imposing ideology and restricting academic freedom, and he wanted the attack to serve as a “wake-up call.”

Court has heard Villalba-Aleman came to Canada from Ecuador in 2018 and was 24 at the time of the attack.

Tyagi, the psychologist, said Wednesday that Villalba-Aleman had ongoing anger and mental health issues dating back to his youth, including a history of self-harm linked to his feelings of failure.