August 1, 1995
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Jeffrey Arenburg, convinced the television station CJOH was broadcasting messages into his head, shoots and kills sports anchor Brian Smith as he exits the building
Three years before the murder, Arenburg had physically assaulted a radio station manager in Nova Scotia, also for supposedly sending broadcasts into his head. Arenburg skipped town before his trial, however, and authorities decided he wasn’t worth the time to track down to apprehend.
As Smith had been a professional ice hockey player before becoming a sports anchor, Arenburg chose Smith as his target, simply because Smith was the first television personality he recognized coming out of the building. Arenburg fired 2 shots from a long-barreled .22-caliber rifle, one of which fatally struck Smith.
Arenburg was found not criminally responsible for the murder due to his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and was remanded to a mental health facility. He was granted a full release in 2006 and died June 26, 2017 of a heart attack.
