Open this photo in gallery: People visit the makeshift memorial near the scene where a car drove into a crowd during the Lapu Lapu Festival, on April 28, in Vancouver.Andrew Chin/Getty Images The Vancouver man accused of using his SUV to kill 11 people attending a Filipino street festival was under supervision by his local health authority and meant to be abiding by certain conditions after being released from a forced stint in hospital, a source told The Globe and Mail. Adam Lo, 30, was placed in a local psychiatric ward in 2023 against his will. A year later, he was apprehended by police for another, shorter, detention in the hospital at the request of his mental-health team, according to the source, who has knowledge of Mr. Lo’s interactions with authorities.

The Globe is not naming the source because they were not authorized to speak publicly about Mr. Lo’s history. His continued poor mental health – which neighbours and childhood friends say centred on paranoid delusions he was being targeted by a number of adversaries – repeatedly led him to reach out to police in recent years, including in the week before the horrific attack that has crushed Canada’s sizable Filipino population. Victims of attack remembered as teacher who found safety in Vancouver, energetic five-year-old ‘Completely shattered’: Shock from Vancouver attack reverberates in the Philippines At a news conference Monday afternoon, the Vancouver Police Department reiterated Mr.

Lo had many interactions with police related to his poor mental health and confirmed he called police in a neighbouring city the day before his alleged attack on the Lapu-Lapu Day Festival on Saturday. Mr. Lo was concerned about strange smells in his vehicle, but there was no evidence of a crime or grounds for officers to apprehend him and take him to hospital, according to the source.

The Vancouver Coastal Health authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday on whether Mr. Lo’s call to police last Friday triggered any extra supervision on its part or whether he had abided by the various conditions he had been placed under after first being hospitalized two years ago. Mr. Lo’s most recent forced stay in a hospital, in 2024, occurred around the time his older brother, Alexander, was killed in a house a short drive from their family home. His mother later attempted suicide, according to an online fundraising effort launched by Mr.

Lo. Mr. Lo is now in custody facing eight counts of second-degree murder, but Vancouver police say three victims are still being identified and more charges are coming.

Sixteen people remain in hospital, with seven in critical condition and three in serious condition. Mr. Lo, who had no previous criminal record, is set to appear in court late next month.

Under British Columbia’s Mental Health Act, a person can be committed for treatment against their will if they are a risk to themselves or others, and meet several criteria. Someone who is involuntarily committed at a facility can, if deemed appropriate, be placed on extended leave, in which a patient can leave the hospital and receive continuing treatment and supervision from a community mental-health team. Jonny Morris, chief executive of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s B.C.

division, said he can’t speak to the specifics of Mr. Lo’s case but said what is known raises important questions about systemic gaps best answered by a public inquiry. He said the fact that Mr. Lo had prior interactions with police and with mental-health services should prompt questions about whether the right resources are in place, and whether there are gaps in the system as it relates to communication between various authorities.

“I would say this is a watershed moment,” he said. “It behooves us at this moment to really look for comprehensive mental-health reform and community-safety reform in this province.” Mr. Morris said conditions of extended leave could include regular appointments for an injectable medication and consistent visits with mental-health professionals. He explained that the duration of an extended leave is up to the discretion of the treating physicians.

Mr. Morris said it’s important not to conflate the civil process of involuntary mental-health treatment with criminality; just because someone has had interactions with police, it doesn’t mean they’ve done anything illegal or will go on to do anything illegal. “We can’t lock people up forever and ever. At some point, people need to go back to their community, and that’s when they need wraparound care,” he said.

Mr. Lo was quiet as a young man, growing up in a southeast Vancouver neighbourhood with his brother and mother after his father died, according to a childhood family friend. Mr.

Lo described being bullied in high school, but it “didn’t strike me as anything unique,” said the friend, whose identity The Globe is not publishing because he fears repercussions for his relationship with the man accused of killing so many. More recently, Mr. Lo appeared to have isolated himself out of fear that he was being watched, said the friend, who is Filipino-Canadian.

Mr. Lo seemed “quite strained mentally — no sleep, some signs of paranoia and not trusting of others," the friend said, describing the period after Mr. Lo’s brother was killed and his mother was hospitalized following the suicide attempt. Mr.

Lo would sometimes describe things that did not appear to have happened. When his mother was in hospital, for example, “he would make claims that nurses were doing specific things or feeling his mom was having shallow breathing – perceptions that did not match what her health care team were reporting,” said the friend. He also developed an anxiety that someone was trying to poison him.

“He had this fear that there was a chemical in his house. Possibly placed by his neighbours that impacted the air he was breathing,” the friend said. Mr.

Lo also expressed concern that chemicals were affecting his sleep. With research from Stephanie Chambers