He was 20 years old, wearing a bucket hat and hanging with two friends on the first day of a popular music festival, a belated trip to celebrate their high school graduation.
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From behind, just below the rim of his hat, the assailant’s knife sliced into the right side of his neck, leaving a jagged wound stretching from his ear to upper shoulder.
He didn’t see the attacker. Didn’t know the assault was coming. He collapsed in a crowded area of the popular Shambhala festival in Southeastern B.C.
“He’s been stabbed!” one woman yelled.
Bystanders tried to stop the bleeding.
Another woman ran to find the festival’s medical staff, according to eyewitness accounts on the Shambhala Facebook page.
“He’s so lucky to be alive,” posted one witness.
The victim, who Postmedia has called Evan to protect his identity, was rushed from the festival site, near the West Kootenay village of Salmo, to the nearest large hospital, 350 kilometres away in Kelowna.
The phone rang that evening, on July 22, 2022, at Evan’s mother’s house in Vancouver. It was her ex-husband, who lives in Nelson, near the festival, telling her their son had been brutally stabbed.
“The worst phone call of my life,” recalled Joy Farley. “I was in absolute shock, just trying to contact the Kelowna hospital, finding out if my son was alive. I just had no idea. And I was terrified.”
Doctors eventually told her that Evan would survive, but if the knife had been a millimetre in either direction when it entered his neck, “he could have died.”
Evan, now 22 and working in Vancouver, wouldn’t speak directly with Postmedia to avoid reliving the trauma. The attack left him with a nasty, 10-cm-long scar on his neck and a sense of feeling abandoned by the justice and health systems, his mother said.
“He felt that nobody cared,” said Farley, an accountant.
That’s because the suspect, who was then 22 years old, was not kept in custody, but released on bail shortly after the assault.
Taio Cote pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon a year later, in June 2023. The judge asked for a doctor’s report on his mental fitness, according to the provincial court database.
In February 2024, Cote received an 18-month conditional sentence, one that is served in the community, not jail. That type of penalty is to be used when offenders are “not a danger to the community” and don’t have a history of failing court orders.
Cote, who had no previous criminal charges listed in the courts database, was also prohibited from possessing a firearm or another type of weapon for three years.
Rearrested, charged with assault officer
But 10 months after his sentencing, on Dec. 21, 2024, Nelson police said an erratic man refused to drop a knife he was holding in front of city hall. Police used a Taser to try to subdue him, but it wasn’t effective. When he charged at officers, one fired his handgun, but the bullet missed the man, who arrested with the help of bystanders.
Cote, now 24, was charged with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, possession of a weapon, and possession of drugs. This time, he has remained in custody.
Farley wants changes to bail laws so that people accused of violent crimes are not released back into society after arrest. And she wants offenders to be given mandatory treatment if they are struggling with addictions and mental illness.
“I definitely didn’t vote for (the B.C. NDP) because of what I’ve been through and what I’ve saw other people in the news go through.”
Public safety was a key issue in October’s provincial election, with many people demanding better protection from stranger attacks and other violent crime.
The B.C. Conservatives ran on a law-and-order platform and its support surged, forcing the NDP to pursue similar policies.
Since its re-election, the NDP has promised to open involuntary care facilities at the Surrey pretrial jail and on the grounds of the Alouette Correctional Centre in Maple Ridge.
The NDP has also vowed to continue to push Ottawa for bail reforms, as that policy that falls under federal jurisdiction.
While both these measures are popular with citizens who want more safety on the streets, there are others, including lawyers and harm-reduction advocates, who argue these approaches are heavy-handed and unfair.
In an interview, Health Minister Josie Osborne said six new involuntary-care beds will open this spring at the Surrey jail, where men are held in custody while awaiting trial. Four more beds are to be added this fall.
Six beds also scheduled to open this spring in stand-alone “homes” on Alouette’s grounds to offer longer-term involuntary care, Osborne said. Although Alouette is for female offenders, these beds will be for men.
The beds at both locations are to be used for the most complex cases of people struggling with mental illness, addiction, or brain injuries caused by repeated overdoses during the toxic drug crisis.
“Some of these people require a level of care that currently we just are not providing,” Osborne said.
Involuntary care beds in jails
Critics, though, question why the NDP’s new involuntary care facilities are in jails.
“I surely would hope that we’re not reliant on criminal activity to find pathways for people to receive this type of care,” said Elenore Sturko, the Conservatives’ public safety critic.
Osborne said that there is a need for these services in jails. The beds will be run by health authorities, not by corrections.
More beds are to be added to Alouette in six-month phases. The population served by the new beds could include people not in the justice system, Osborne said.
The NDP promised in September to open a total of 400 involuntary care beds in jails and hospitals, but is still “working with experts” to determine when and where those will be located, she added.
Who will have the authority to commit patients to the facilities and determine the length of time they would be kept there is still being decided, Osborne said.
Kyla Lee, a Vancouver criminal defence lawyer, said it is crucial that those types of guidelines are established, and there should also be a requirement for an independent, medical review panel to monitor the patients in care.
Putting people with mental health and addictions into prison doesn’t change them
Guy Felicella
Lee doesn’t agree that B.C. needs to expand the scope of involuntary care. It exists right now under the Mental Health Act for people who are unable to care for themselves. But it’s not appropriate, she argued, for people who can feed themselves and live on their own, even if they have a drug addiction, mental illness or can act out violently.
“The simple fact that somebody could cause harm to somebody isn’t enough to justify taking away every single constitutional right you would have, and your autonomy over your body and your decision making in your life,” Lee said.
Medical research shows that forcing people with mental health and addictions issues into treatment is generally “a recipe for disaster” because there is no guarantee that they will remain sober and stable, said Guy Felicella, a peer clinical adviser with Vancouver Coastal Health.
“Putting people with mental health and addictions into prison doesn’t change them,” said Felicella, a former drug user. “What we have to do is address the social determinants of health.”
The best solution to prevent people from being violent in the first place is to ensure they can get stable housing, counselling, employment, and widespread, immediate mental health and addictions treatment, said both Felicella and Lee.
But until all those supports are in place, involuntary care is needed to protect the public, argued Sturko, the Conservatives’ public safety critic.
To back up her position, she lists recent examples of alarming stranger attacks in Metro Vancouver: the father out with his toddler killed outside a Vancouver Starbucks, a young man fatally stabbed by the White Rock pier, a Japanese chef fatally stabbed by a stranger in Vancouver, a man struggling with mental health who stabbed one man to death and severed the hand of another victim in the city’s downtown.
Farley wants to be part of a grassroots movement to make communities safer for victims like her son. She also wants to help offenders like Cote, who she believes would have benefited from getting mental health treatment rather than being left to rotate through the justice system.
“This is another family probably really hurting,” she said of Cote’s relatives. “I just truly believe in involuntary care for (violent) people, so that families can be safe.”
Farley’s other key wish is for bail laws to be strengthened, because it was terrifying for Evan and the rest of their family to know the person accused of stabbing him in 2022 was granted bail shortly after the attack.
“We just couldn’t believe that he was just released after such a violent crime,” she said.
In 2023, the federal government announced bail reform legislation, which includes measures to make it more difficult for repeat violent offenders to get released. The federal justice minister said the changes came due to pressure from B.C. Premier David Eby and other provincial politicians.
“Aggressively” pushing for bail reform
In her mandate letter from the premier, issued in January, Attorney General Niki Sharma was told to “aggressively” push Ottawa for more reforms, to increase the odds of keeping violent offenders in custody.
Postmedia asked Sharma’s office how she would do this, but the statement she issued did not directly answer the question beyond saying she would continue to advocate law reform.
The right to reasonable bail is enshrined in the Charter
Kyla Lee
Sharma added her government has created programs that bring together police and probation officers to identify repeat violent offenders and “connect people to services they need to stop the cycle of crime.”
During the provincial election campaign, though, the Conservatives repeatedly accused the NDP of being soft on the “catch and release” of violent offenders. The party also claimed the government had turned “neighbourhoods into danger zones.”
Sturko said it’s not appropriate for Sharma to place all the blame on Ottawa for not doing enough to strengthen bail laws. She argued the province needs to figure out why dangerous people are still being released and work with its prosecutors to stop it.
“It’s their responsibility to administer justice and make sure it’s working,” Sturko said.
But Lee, the criminal defence lawyer, argued bail does not require reform in Canada. Judges and lawyers are best equipped to determine whether someone’s detention is warranted after hearing all the facts in the case, she said.
“The right to reasonable bail is enshrined in the Charter,” Lee added.
In his mandate letter from the premier last month, Solicitor General Garry Begg was instructed to make communities safer by ensuring provincial services support police officers who interact with people in crisis or are identified as presenting a risk to themselves or others.
When asked for concrete examples of how this would be achieved, his ministry sent a statement listing several programs, which include:
• Establishing teams of health workers and peers with lived experiences in six communities to respond to crisis calls instead of police.
• Nineteen mobile response teams pairing an officer with a mental health expert to de-escalate situations with a safety risk.
• Piloting a digital public safety platform, HealthIM, with the Port Moody police to give advice for emergency response involving mental health and addiction.
• Improving information sharing between police, justice and community partners to help prosecutors make informed decisions during bail and sentencing hearings.
• Hiring 155 provincial police officers, with another 100 still to come.
Farley, though, argued the NDP should have made public safety a priority years ago, before her son was attacked.
The involuntary care beds opening in Surrey and Alouette this spring are “not enough,” she said. She wants the government to buy buildings and hire staff to expand capacity.
“The involuntary care facilities need to be safe and nice and offer treatment and access to parents and loved ones who want to check on them,” she said.
“He just wants it to go away”
Her son, she said, is a hard worker who is kind and sometimes shy, a “regular kid” who liked skateboarding and basketball before he was attacked. Everything changed after he was stabbed and the suspect released from custody.
“His mental health is not great,” Farley said, her voice quivering with emotion.
The four-day Shambhala festival was a belated graduation trip for her son and his two friends, as they completed high school in 2020, when all grad celebrations and social activities were cancelled due to the pandemic.
Farley knew the popular summer festival has a reputation for drug use, but she spoke with her son about staying safe and her brother, a nurse, often worked at the venue, although he wasn’t there when Evan was stabbed.
In a brief Facebook comment, Farley’s son thanked the medics at the festival for saving his life.
Police told the media in July 2022 that the attack was not random because Evan and the accused knew each other, but Farley says that’s not accurate.
The two knew each other because they were both students in Nelson for a time, but her son finished high school in Vancouver and the pair had no contact and were not friends, she said.
At the time of his attack, Evan was working for his mother’s accounting business as a bookkeeper.
Since being injured, he now does temporary construction work “because he feels that he’s not capable of having a regular, full-time job,” his worried mother said.
She hopes policy changes in the future will protect other families from experiencing this kind of trauma.
“The impact this has had on his life — I don’t know if my son will go on to college because he hasn’t even been able to bring himself to get counselling,” Farley said.
“He just wants it to go away, which is very difficult when you have a huge four-inch scar going down your entire neck.”