Suspect in bus killing ate victim’s flesh, tape says

TORONTO – A police officer at the scene of a grisly beheading on a Canadian bus reported seeing the attacker hacking off pieces of the victim’s body and eating them, according to a police tape leaked on the Internet Saturday.

In the tape of radio transmissions, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer refers to the attacker as “Badger” and says he is armed with a knife and scissors and is “defiling the body at the front of the bus as we speak.”

On the tape, which lasts about 80 seconds, officers continue to detail the attacker’s movements until one reports, “Badger’s at the back of the bus, hacking off pieces and eating it.”

Officers were responding to a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway about 12 miles from Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, after the bloody attack late Wednesday on the bus traveling from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Vince Weiguang Li, 40, faces second-degree murder charges for the murder of a 22-year-old man, whom friends and family identified as Tim McLean. Police have not confirmed the identity.

Passengers said they had just reboarded the bus following a break when the suspect – for no apparent reason – stabbed the man sitting next to him dozens of times as passengers fled in horror. He then severed the man’s head, displayed it and began hacking at the body.

McLean’s family spoke publicly Saturday for the first time.

“He was a little guy with a heart bigger than you could know,” McLean’s uncle, Alex McLean, told reporters in a prepared statement from the family.

“Tim spent his life traveling and meeting new people and always saw the good in everyone. He had the most infectious giggle. You could hear him laughing a mile away,” said Alex McLean.