‘My mind is completely shot’: Why this transgender woman is seeking assisted suicide

The bomb was heavy, so he placed it in two plastic shopping bags, double-upped for strength, and hooked the bag over the handlebars as he walked his bike through the streets of Barrie, Ont.

The 23-year-old had built the pipe bomb in his bedroom, away from his mother’s eyes. He wasn’t looking to get chemicals “and formulate any real explosive material,” the bomb builder recently recalled. “I just needed what they call a low-order explosive.” One with the capacity to kill him.

There are two narratives of what occurred next.

According to a Crown brief, the bomb was planted on the footpath near a communications tower, the fishing line running into the woods.

According to the bomb’s creator, after mulling over the reasons for living, the decision was made to blow up a police car instead, a “defiant and angry gesture,” a forensic psychiatrist would report, because of his dealings with police in the past. The substation was unmanned at night, but there was an open yard with vehicles. At some point in his journey, as he walked along the dirt path towards the radio tower, the bomb in his left hand, the spool of fishing line in his right, the line got snagged on a branch. “I felt a tug.” Then everything went blank.