Vancouver Chinatown festival stabbing suspect has a long history of violence

The man charged with randomly stabbing three people at a festival in Chinatown Sunday night was previously charged in 2006 with killing his daughter.

Blair Evan Donnelly said God wanted him to kill his 16-year-old daughter, Stephanie, when they were living in Kitimat, B.C.

According to court documents, on Nov. 23, 2006, Donnelly went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, stabbing his daughter several times, first in the chest and then in the neck.

After the attack, Donnelly went to the church and prayed, according to the documents.

On Jan. 23, 2008, a judge found Donnelly not criminally responsible due to mental disorder in the second-degree murder of his daughter.

He was sent to the forensic psychiatric hospital in Coquitlam, Colony Farm.

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In 2009, Donnelly was before the courts again in Surrey.

That file is currently sealed, but according to a 2011 report in the Vancouver Sun, the B.C. Review Board granted Donnelly unescorted leave and a violent incident involving a weapon took place.

The 2011 story by Kim Bolan said that in February 2009, Donnelly was granted unsupervised community visits up to 28 days in length. It was during one of these visits in October later that year that he stabbed a friend and was held criminally responsible for that incident.

On Monday, Vancouver police Chief Const. Adam Palmer said Donnelly was out on a day pass when he allegedly stabbed three people in an unprovoked attack at a family event in Chinatown Sunday night.

The stabbings left a Burnaby couple in their 60s and a Vancouver woman in her 20s with severe but non-life-threatening injuries, Palmer confirmed.

All of the victims were ethnically Asian, he added, but the motive for the attack remains under investigation.

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The B.C. Review Board declined to comment on the case on Monday.

However, the board did confirm that in April, an order was made in Donnelly’s case that stated that any community access, escorted or unescorted, was up to the discretion of the director.

— with files from Rumina Daya and The Canadian Press