The man who stabbed a woman to death in Nanaimo’s Harewood area in 2022 has been deemed not criminally responsible by a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
In December, Simon James Baker, 23, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder related to an incident June 20, 2022, on Eighth Street in Nanaimo. According to an agreed statement of facts, Denise Allick, 40, of Victoria, was stabbed to death. Baker, diagnosed with schizophrenia, was suffering from delusions. He was also known to abuse illicit drugs.
Justice Douglas Thompson ruled that Baker was not culpable due to mental disorder at the Nanaimo courthouse on Wednesday, Jan. 10. The judge stated two elements must be proven: proof that the accused was suffering from mental disorder at the time of the offence, and that the disorder rendered him incapable of knowing the action was wrong.
Reports by two forensic psychiatrists were conducted as part of the case.
Based on interactions with police and hospital staff and accounts from his family in the months prior to the incident, it was “clear” Baker “was intermittently psychotic with prominent paranoia,” Thompson said. Baker believed for several years that he would be attacked in his home and also commented on believing that he had been possessed by a demon.
“I think it is rightfully true that this terrible event unfolded within seconds,” said Thompson. “I find that Mr. Baker reacted on impulse rooted in paranoia when he stabbed Ms. Allick, with little, or no, opportunity for rational consideration … in the immediacy of the moment, I find his perceptions were distorted and he defaulted to the paranoid thoughts that have long been a feature of his schizophrenia.”
At the time of the incident, Thompson stated, Baker was under the care of a psychiatrist and a mental health case worker. He was being treated with anti-psychotic medication and was due for a monthly injection.
He was outside the house, smoking a cigarette and came in contact with Allick, who was not known to him, and Thompson stated that he stabbed her with a knife in the face, shoulder and neck, which severed an artery. He told police he had consumed opiates prior to being arrested.
Baker will be held in custody at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam.
“It was a difficult case for all the reasons that the judge mentioned, a real lack of information,” said Nick Barber, Crown counsel. “We’re usually provided with more information about how events unfold.”
Stephen Taylor, defence counsel, had similar thoughts, stating the ruling is the only conclusion that fits the facts.
“This whole tragedy is inexplicable unless you look at it through the lens of mental illness, then everything fits into place,” he said. “It’s just such a tragedy. The timing is so bad that these strangers had to meet at that moment, when his paranoia and the psychosis was activated and triggered by her arrival.”
Baker’s family did not wish to comment.
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