You won’t be running into Allan Schoenborn at a Starbucks any time soon.

The child killer’s escorted leaves will be limited to short walks outside the psychiatric facility he’s lodged in, Bernd Walter, the chair of the B.C. Review Board, told The Daily News on Thursday.

And Walter said any violent or problem behaviour on his ward in the low-security Hawthorne House in Port Coquitlam could result in curtailment of those outings.

“The doctor would be assessing his mental state each time,“ said Walter. “It’s not that he’s been given permission for outings. The doctor has been given permission to consider him for escorted outings.”

Public response to the review board’s announcement Wednesday that Schoenborn, 42, will be allowed to take supervised day trips was one of dismay.

Schoenborn was found not criminally responsible last winter for the murder of his children — aged five, eight and 10 — three years ago in Merritt.

He's since been diagnosed with a delusional disorder and has been receiving treatment at a psychiatric hospital where he has been confined since his trial.

Walter said Schoenborn’s excursions will be limited to 15- to 20-minute jaunts around a park outside Hawthorne House at the Forensic Psychiatric Institution. Walter said he’s under the watch of trained health care workers the entire time.

Schoenborn can attend medical appointments and visits to a recreational facility. Walter said Schoenborn might be the lone patient on the trip or in the company of other patients from Hawthorne House.

“He will have no unnecessary access to the community and no overnight leaves.”
What the public has latched onto is Schoenborn’s request to visit Starbucks for a coffee, said Walter. He said such a trip can’t be ruled out, but Schoenborn has to prove he’s stable enough to do so.

The ruling doesn’t give Schoenborn a rubber stamp to go whenever he wants. If the patient acts out or has a bad week on the ward, a request will be denied.

“It’s basically allowing the doctor to consider this when it’s clinically advisable,” said Walter. “It all has to do with his mental state at the time.”

Reid Webster, a clinical psychologist at Thompson Rivers University, said the public has nothing to fear, especially people in Merritt and Kamloops. Schoenborn’s excursions are limited to the community where he is housed.

He said the decision to grant Schoenborn an escorted leave wasn’t made lightly and every precaution is made to protect the public.

The review board’s decision was made following a hearing Wednesday. Dr. Johann Brink, clinical director of the psychiatric hospital, said Schoenborn was “compliant,” taking medication and learning to cook.

Schoenborn argued that he poses no threat because he’d already killed his children and being locked up for three years was “enough.”

Crown counsel Lyle Hlllaby warned that Schoenborn is “cagey and not to be trusted. We don’t believe he was insane — he killed his own children in order to lash out at his wife. He is an angry and volatile individual.”