Maybe he wasn’t sick and delusional at all. Maybe Richard Kachkar was trying to commit “suicide by cop” and that’s why he drove his stolen snowplow directly at Sgt. Ryan Russell.
Crown attorney Christine McGoey put that theory to Dr. Philip Klassen Friday in a valiant attempt to undo the damage done to her first-degree murder case against the hapless 46-year-old man. The forensic psychiatrist’s testimony the previous day had strongly bolstered the defence position that Kachkar should be found not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder — likely schizophrenia — and because he didn’t appreciate the consequences and moral wrongfulness of his act.
In her cross-examination, the prosecutor offered a different proposition — that Kachkar wasn’t suffering paranoid delusions when he stole that snowplow on Jan. 12, 2011, and went on a wild two-hour rampage that included striking and killing a police sergeant. Instead, she suggested, he knew exactly what he was doing.
