Phillips’s past includes problems with alcohol and painkillers, jail time (with video) | Ottawa Citizen

The man arrested at the Chimo Hotel in Ottawa and facing criminal charges after the discovery of a hazardous chemicals cache in Halifax was diagnosed in 2008 with a mood disorder, an addiction to painkillers, an alcohol problem and narcissistic tendencies, court documents show.

 

The April 2008 report from a Texas psychiatric hospital is among reams of U.S. court documents that also reveal Christopher Phillips once did a short stint in jail and took methadone to ease the pain of a crippling injury to his feet — something that made it difficult to stand for any length of time, even after seven surgeries.

 

Ottawa police arrested Phillips, 42, on the sixth floor of an east-side hotel on Wednesday morning as part of an overnight investigation linked to the evacuation of two areas in Halifax where police found a large quantity of mysterious chemicals — some of which they’ve described as “volatile” and “dangerous.”

 

Phillips was transported back to Nova Scotia on Thursday. He was charged in Halifax with one count of threatening police with bodily harm or death, and a count of possessing a weapon. That weapon is identified as

 

An investigation into the discovery of hazardous chemicals at two residences linked to Phillips’s wife — one a home assessed to be worth about $515,000 in Cole Harbour and a second a tiny coastal cottage with peeling red paint — prompted separate evacuations earlier this week.

 

RCMP Cpl. Greg Church said two chemists from Health Canada were helping with the investigation. Church said an evacuation that was ordered around the cottage in Grand Desert, N.S., about 35 kilometres east of downtown Halifax, was expected to remain in effect overnight.

 

“We have here of course a situation with several unknowns,” Church said Thursday. “We do have two very serious criminal charges that have been laid against the individual.”

 

He said there was no reason to believe that the areas that were evacuated were contaminated. He declined to comment on whether the osmium tetroxide listed in the sworn information was found at the residences.

 

Curated from Phillips’s past includes problems with alcohol and painkillers, jail time (with video) | Ottawa Citizen