Merritt suspect was struggling with separation from kids: court documents

The father who is the prime suspect in the slaying of his three children told a justice of peace the week before their deaths that he was struggling with the separation from his family, saying it was "hard to be without the ones you love."

Since the bodies of the three children were discovered on Sunday afternoon in their mother's trailer in the small B.C. city of Merritt, police have been searching for their 40-year-old father, Allan Dwayne Schoenborn.

"I just have a hard time, you know, dealing with my separation of my family," Schoenborn said at a bail hearing last week, according to a transcript obtained by CBC News on Thursday. "It's really hard to be without the ones you love."

Schoenborn was in court on charges relating to allegations he'd gone to his 10-year-old daughter Kaitlynne's school and threatened a nine-year-old girl he believed was harassing his daughter, then also confronted the school principal.

The father is the subject of a police search that entered its fourth day on Thursday. He's the prime suspect in the deaths of his daughter and two sons Max, 8, and Cordon, 5.

Schoenborn said in court that he was working on his problems and had only gone to the school to defend his daughter, saying the nine-year-old made his daughter cry.

"I did react badly … I do understand the officer's concern," he said.

'You got a good break on this'

The transcript reveals that an RCMP officer requested that Justice of the Peace Fraser Hodge not release Schoenborn.

"My biggest concern here is the fact that Mr. Schoenborn is willing or capable of … threatening a nine-year-old girl," said Const. Scott McDiarmid.

The constable raised concerns that Schoenborn posed a flight risk, though he never raised the issue of whether he posed a danger to anyone.

In the end, the justice of peace decided to release Schoenborn.

"You have a fairly long criminal record — three pages — but it is old. There's not much in there other than this driving problem," Hodge said.

Schoenborn replied, "God bless you."

Hodge then warned, "I want you to remember that you got a good break on this. Don't let anything go wrong."

RCMP defends delay of public alert

Also on Thursday, the RCMP came under fire for not alerting the public to their search for Schoenborn until 20 hours after learning of the deaths.

A Canada-wide alert was issued at 7:05 p.m. Sunday for police forces to be on the lookout for Schoenborn, more than four hours after receiving the call about the triple slaying.

But it wasn't until the next day, on Monday, that the RCMP released the father's name and photo, saying he was a suspect. 

RCMP Assistant Commissioner Al MacIntyre refused to second-guess the team commander in charge of the investigation, saying more information about the decisions made during the investigation will come out when officers testify in a possible court case or inquest.

"People weren't sitting idly about," MacIntyre said. "Other processes were being tended to."

MacIntyre also suggested that the three siblings may have been dead for some time before their mother called police.

"It's not 10 minutes," the assistant commissioner said, adding that he couldn't disclose anything more about the timeline.

There were earlier news reports that the mother, Darcie Clarke, had only left the children in the care of the father for 10 minutes. "That's not so," MacIntyre said.

He said that it would be false to assume the father left around the time police were called to the scene. "He may have left considerably sooner," he said.

Asked by reporters whether the mother was a suspect, MacIntyre paused then said, "I'm not going to comment on that."

He later added: "Personally in my heart, I don't see the mother as a suspect. I could be proven wrong afterwards because something else will have been learned or determined."

But he stressed that currently the focus is on finding the father. The mother is under police guard in hospital.

"Right now, we're looking for him," MacIntyre said.

Police continue to hunt for Schoenborn both in Canada and the United States, and investigators are looking into more than 150 tips on possible sightings.