Police have a convicted killer in custody after he disappeared from a psychiatric hospital, triggering a Canada-wide warrant.
Coquitlam RCMP issued a warning about 54-year-old Terrance Scott Giesbrecht on Monday, after he eluded a pair of attendants while on an escorted day pass.
He is a patient of the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, better known as Colony Farm.
Johan Brink, vice-president for BC Mental Health and Addiction Services, said Giesbrecht slipped away from the two staff members as they were entering a vehicle on Friday.
Giesbrecht was granted escorted daypasses in May of last year after he showed significant progress, Brink said.
Brink insisted the review process for passes is thorough, and designed to reintegrate mentally ill patients into the community.
Officials are now investigating what went wrong, he said.
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“In this case, something happened. And we will be very interested to see any way we can improve our processes to ensure that this doesn’t happen,” Brink said.
Brink said police were immediately notified, but could not speak to why the public was not informed until Monday.
The RCMP has not made a spokesperson available to address that detail.
It’s not the first time that Giesbrecht has disappeared from Colony Farm.
Back in 2009, he left the facility with permission but failed to return by curfew. He was returned to custody two days later.
Police warned at the time that he had the potential to be violent.
A review board that same year found Giesbrecht continued to maintain a belief that the U.S. military was altering the solar system’s electromagnetic field, and that the 2004 killings had been regrettable but were necessary to prevent further world catastrophe.
The Forensic Psychiatric Hospital houses some of B.C.’s most notorious offenders, including Allan Schoenborn, who murdered his three children in Merritt and was found not criminally responsible due to mental illness.
Others in custody there have been found mentally unfit to stand trial.
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