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Mentally ill murder suspect ordered to state mental hospital

By Bob Albrecht
Published: March 22, 2010, 12:00am

A Vancouver man ruled legally insane when he stabbed his sister to death because he believed she was Satan has been ordered to a state mental facility for an uncertain term, a judge has ruled.

“He could be held for the rest of his life,” Deputy Prosecutor Tonya Riddell said of Michael Schuurmans after the hearing.

Clark County Superior Court Judge Robert Lewis ruled today that Schuurmans remains a substantial danger to the community unless he’s confined.

Absent new evidence, the judge’s ruling was based on testimony and psychological evaluations submitted during a trial completed earlier this month when Schuurmans was acquitted in the Feb. 28, 2009, slaying of Shirry L. Dohman-Rice, 53, at their home on Memphis Way in the McLoughlin Heights area.

Lewis ruled then that Schuurmans, 48, didn’t know right from wrong when he lapsed into a psychotic break, believing he was God and his sister was the devil.

Now, it will be up to doctors at Western State Hospital near Tacoma to determine when, if ever, Schuurmans is mentally fit to rejoin society.

“He’ll be sent to Western State pursuant to doctors’ evaluations,” said Tom Phelan, Schuurmans’ defense attorney, who called both Lewis’ decision to acquit his client earlier this month and today’s ruling to assign him to Western State “appropriate.”

The acquittal on the charge of first-degree murder came after two days of testimony heard on March 1 and 2.

Family members testified that Schuurmans’ bipolar disorder had become progressively worse over the past few years. It was marked by a delusion that he was religiously anointed and receiving messages from the universe through the TV and media.

He eventually believed the Apocalypse was under way and that he was required to kill the “beast,” whom he thought had inhabited his sister, to protect the world, defense attorney Phelan said previously.

All the doctors at Western State Hospital who evaluated Schuurmans in advance of the trial agreed he was legally insane at the time the slaying was committed, when he wasn’t taking medication prescribed for his psychosis.

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