TORONTO — A police officer at the scene of a grisly beheading on a Canadian bus reported seeing the attacker hacking off pieces of the victim’s body and eating them, according to a police tape leaked on the Internet Saturday.
In the tape of radio transmissions, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer refers to the attacker as “Badger” and says he is armed with a knife and scissors and is “defiling the body at the front of the bus as we speak.”
On the tape, which lasts about 80 seconds, officers continue to detail the attacker’s movements until one reports, “Badger’s at the back of the bus, hacking off pieces and eating it.”
The RCMP described the tapes as “operational police communications and, as such, are not meant for public consumption.” Police said permission had not been given to use the radio transmission, which was posted on LiveLeak.com and picked up by other Web sites.
Vince Weiguang Li, 40, faces second-degree murder charges for the murder of a 22-year-old man, whom friends and family identified as Tim McLean. Police have not confirmed the victim’s identity.
McLean’s family spoke publicly Saturday for the first time since the brutal attack.
“He was a little guy with a heart bigger than you could know,” McLean’s uncle, Alex McLean, said in a prepared statement.
The killing has spawned a vast online community, with tens of thousands showing support for McLean’s family and expressing disgust for the attack.
One of the many groups on the social networking site Facebook has accumulated over 40,000 members with more than 2,000 wall posts.
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