New details revealed about the slain gunman responsible for Wednesday morning's attack on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario show he attempted to get himself arrested in the past not once, but twice.
It was three years ago, according to court records obtained by CTV, that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau approached police in British Columbia and confessed to an armed robbery he said he committed a decade earlier in Quebec.
The reasoning behind his confession? To get into jail and recover from a crack addiction. But according to CTV, officials couldn't find any trace of the robbery, so they didn't charge him.
It was after that he decided to go to a Vancouver McDonald's and rob it with a pointed stick.
The Vancouver Sun quotes Bibeau during a December 2011 bail hearing as telling a judge, "I'm a crack addict, and at the same time, I'm a religious person. I want to sacrifice freedom and good things for a year, maybe and when I come out, I'll appreciate things in life more."
The Province also reports Bibeau telling the court that if he wasn't put in jail this time, he was just going to go out and do something else to get arrested.
So that time he was put in jail, and given a psych assessment. That assessment, obtained by the CBC, notes that psychiatrists were unable to find any signs of a mental illness and saw that he was fit to stand trial.
According to the Ottawa Citizen, Bibeau remained in jail for around two months before pleading guilty to the charge of "uttering threats" during the McDonald's robbery. The next day, he was released.
It was after that The Globe and Mail says he became homeless, staying at a mosque he was eventually kicked out of and a local Salvation Army.
It wasn't until October 2 that he reportedly showed up at an Ottawa shelter, just two blocks from where he'd make his standoff 20 days later at Parliament Hill.
