PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. — A British Columbia father found not criminally responsible for killing his three children won’t be able to apply for permission to leave the psychiatric hospital he now calls home, a provincial review board said Wednesday.
Allan Schoenborn had applied for escorted absences, nearly six years after he killed his children at their home in Merritt, B.C.
His treatment team at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, in Port Coquitlam east of Vancouver, told a B.C. Review Board hearing on Wednesday that Schoenborn posted too great a risk to public safety to be let out.
Dave Teixeira, who speaks for the family of Schoenborn’s ex-wife, Darcie Clarke, confirmed the board’s decision roughly two hours after the hearing wrapped up. “They’ve made a decision — and we’re very glad to hear it — that Allan Schoenborn will be kept in custody for another year,” Teixeira.
Schoenborn stabbed his daughter Kaitlynne, 10, and then smothered his sons, eight-year-old Max and five-year-old Cordon, at their home in Merritt in April 2008, leaving their bodies to be found by their mother, Darcie Clarke.
He fled, only to be found more than a week later dehydrated in the woods nearby.