Three more days of hearings in the annual review of child killer Allan Schoenborn begin tomorrow with Crown bringing forth a psychologist.
“Crown intends to call one witness during the continuing proceedings to provide evidence Crown feels will assist the review board in its consideration of the level of risk presented by Mr. Schoenborn,” Neil MacKenzie, communications counsel with the criminal justice branch, told the Herald.
Schoenborn has requested supervised day passes from the psychiatric hospital in Port Coquitlam where he’s lived since being found not criminally responsible for murdering his three children, 10-year-old Kaitlynne, eight-year-old Max and five-year-old Cordon, at their Merritt home in 2008.
Schoenborn was denied this same request to the review board in February 2014 because he was said to pose too great a risk to public safety to be allowed out.
The review board is currently considering whether or not to allow the hospital director the discretion to allow Schoenborn supervised access into the community during the next year, MacKenzie said.
Under the recently past federal Bill C-14 if Schoenborn was designated a high-risk accused, his review hearings could be held once every three years instead of annually and escorted visits into the public could only be granted for medical reasons and would be subject to safeguards to protect the public.
Dave Teixeira, a spokesperson for Darcie Clarke, the mother of the victims, said Schoenborn should be found to be a high-risk offender, so that he has a three-year time period to focus on getting treatment as opposed to trying to get escorted day leave every year.
“He will be a healthier person, society can be safe and that three years will give Darcie Clarke and her family some time to heal as well,” Teixeira said.
Teixeira said they are concerned of Schoenborn’s propensity to escape and harm Clarke if he’s granted escorted leave, pointing out Schoenborn evaded police for 10 days after the murders in 2008.
BC Review Board chair Bernd Walters told the Herald that a Supreme Court judge would need to classify Schoenborn as a high-risk accused.
Whether or not the Crown will seek such a designation will be determined at a later time, MacKenzie said.
“The Crown hasn’t made a determination one way or another,” he said.
“An application for a designation of a high-risk accused is something that we’ll determine once the annual review process is dealt with.”
