Rabbit Advocacy Animal Matters

Vancouver man accused of murdering his mother was deemed low risk to re-offend after beating dog to death

November 10, 2014 Vancouver Sun

The man accused of murdering a Vancouver woman this weekend was deemed a low risk for further violence after he brutally beat his dog with a baseball bat two years ago.

Brian Whitlock, 28, first gained notoriety in the summer of 2012, when he beat his German Shepherd Captain and left him for dead in a Kitsilano dumpster. He is now charged with second-degree murder after the discovery of a woman's body in a Dunbar home on Saturday. The victim has not been identified, but the home is registered to Barbara Whitlock, the accused man's mother.

A June 12, 2013 sentence decision following Whitlock's guilty plea in Captain's death reveals that forensic psychiatrist Dr. Shabehram Lorahsbe believed Whitlock was at low risk for further violence as long as he "attends to and deals with his mental disorder in a responsible and appropriate fashion." The judgment also provides details of a troubling history that includes a campaign of vandalism against his former mother-in-law and a strange episode that led to a ban from all Starbucks in B.C.

Whitlock was once a young man who showed "great promise" as an honours student and captain of his high school basketball team, Judge David St. Pierre wrote. However, his life took a turn for the worse when he began drinking heavily and experimenting with drugs while studying at the University of Victoria. He eventually dropped out.

His parents' messy divorce in 2009 was closely followed by the birth of his child and then separation from his common-law wife, events that St. Pierre suggests triggered psychological stress. Whitlock believed that his ex and her mother were conspiring against him in a plot to keep him away from his child and began showing signs of paranoia and delusion.

"Mr. Whitlock began engaging in increasingly bizarre behaviour. He would visit his mother‑in‑law's house, I will call her that, and damage her property. He would let the air out of her tires, damage flowers, the gate at the house, the carport," St. Pierre wrote. His behaviour resulted in a charge of mischief in the spring of 2012.

Meanwhile, Whitlock was "essentially living in squalor" in a Kitsilano apartment. "His thinking was, by all accounts, becoming increasingly disordered and paranoid. His own mother became quite concerned for him and with what appeared to be a break with reality that she was observing," St. Pierre wrote.

A psychologist who treated him in June 2012 suggested that Whitlock was suffering from psychosis and prescribed anti-psychotic medication for him. A month later, Whitlock became convinced that his dog "was poisoned by evil forces and may have become cursed" after Captain ate something off the ground during a walk. Whitlock became convinced that the animal was deranged and needed to be euthanized. He used a baseball bat to beat Captain on the head several times, then wrapped the dog in a blanket and placed him in the dumpster behind the building, believing him to be dead.

The discovery of the beaten and bloody dog led to widespread outrage, and Whitlock was the subject of numerous death threats, which the judge suggested led to further mental deterioration. In February 2013, after Whitlock missed a doctor's appointment to refill his prescription for anti-psychotic medication, he went into a Starbuck coffee shop and hit a manager, then slapped a woman on the buttocks. That incident resulted in an assault charge.

For his treatment of Captain, St. Pierre sentenced Whitlock to 60 days in jail and handed him a lifetime ban on owning animals. The judge also barred him from any contact with his former mother-in-law or the people he assaulted at Starbucks, and barred him from visiting any Starbucks in the province. Whitlock is scheduled to make his first appearance on the murder charge Monday.