A Quebec coroner has called on mental health professionals to re-evaluate their approach toward patients who show signs of “radicalization.”

In a coroner’s report released Friday, Dr. André-H. Dandavino ruled that Martin Couture-Rouleau, the Quebec man who struck and killed a Canadian soldier with his car in 2014, was rushing toward police with a knife in each hand when officers opened fire on him.

The failed entrepreneur and Daesh sympathizer had put an officer’s life in danger, Dandavino wrote.

But it was to the mental health care system, not law enforcement or Canadian intelligence, that the coroner addressed all five recommendations at the conclusion of his report.

Dandavino called on Quebec’s Ministry of Health and Social Services, the province’s association of psychiatrists, and administrators at a local hospital to re-evaluate their protocols for handling mental health patients who, like Couture-Rouleau, show interest in radicalism.

The Ministry of Health and Social Services should ensure that mental health patients showing signs of radicalism are evaluated by a psychiatrist, Dandavino wrote.

Quebec’s association of psychiatrist should ensure its members develop expertise in cases of mental illnesses that include a component of radicalism.

Couture-Rouleau, 25, seemed to “live in a delirium” and showed signs of “psychiatric pathology,” the coroner wrote in his report.

Beginning in 2012, Couture-Rouleau made several visits to hospitals and psychiatric clinics for problems ranging from depression to delusions of having met God, Dandavino said in his report.

He came to believe his father was a demon and showed interest in conspiracy theories about Sept. 11 and the Illuminati, a mythical group conspiracy theorists say has power over governments and the economy.

By 2013, Couture-Rouleau’s father was appealing to mental health professionals for help, saying he was “discouraged” and did not know what to do for his son.

His father called the police several times in 2013 and 2014, at first to inform them he could not control his son, and later to warn them of his son’s interest in Islamist extremism.

On Oct. 20, 2014, Couture-Rouleau murdered Warrant Office Patrice Vincent in a hit-and-run in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

He led police on a nine-minute car chase before crashing his vehicle into a ditch.

After asking officers for help getting out of the vehicle, Couture-Rouleau emerged with a 25-centimetre blade in his right hand and a 7-cm blade in his left, Dandavino wrote.

Advancing on an officer, with his knives held at shoulder height, Couture-Rouleau ignored at least 10 orders from police to drop his weapons.

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Four police officers then opened fire, hitting Couture-Rouleau with 11 bullets, Dandavino wrote.

Couture-Rouleau kept moving toward police and did not fall until he was less than a metre away from one officer, the report says.

He was pronounced dead at a hospital less than an hour later.