A Mississauga veteran was found not guilty by reason of insanity on Friday for an attempted murder and felonious assault charge he faced in Ohio.

The charges stemmed from an incident in November 2016 when Jason Lesko allegedly stabbed his brother several times in the neck, chest and hand with a kitchen knife at their father’s house in Ravenna, Ohio.

Lesko’s wife Precious recalled her husband being confused and “behaving erratically” on Nov. 28.

The next morning, she awoke to find her husband had disappeared from their Mississauga home without his cellphone or a change of clothes.

He turned up at his father’s house in Ohio, where his brother was. His brother tried to reason with him, urging him to return to his family in Canada.

Jason Lesko was charged on Dec. 8 with attempted murder, felonious assault and disrupting public services in connection with the incident involving his brother, which he couldn’t even remember, according to Precious.

A judge in Portage County, Ohio ruled Friday that Lesko wasn’t well enough to understand what he allegedly did.

“Due to his mental defect, he didn’t know the rightfulness or wrongfulness of his actions at the time,” said Sean Scahill, an assistant prosecutor in Portage County.

The third charge, disrupting public services, was dismissed.

Lesko, a permanent resident of Canada where he has lived since 2009, served in the U.S. military from 2003 to 2008, including two tours in Iraq.

He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following his arrest.

Precious Lesko, a former Toronto Star reporter, said the incident was very uncharacteristic of her husband, especially considering he had abruptly taken off from their Mississauga home without warning.

“It’s sort of a tough situation to be in, because you don’t have a full recollection of what you allegedly did and then you also don’t really fully understand why you might have done that, but you’re told you did it,” she said.

“I do think that is hurting him, because he’s not fully understanding how did this happen and what could we have done differently to not allow this to happen.”

Scahill said the Ohio judge reviewed reports by two separate psychologists who agreed following their evaluations that Lesko had been insane at the time of the incident in question.

Lesko will be transferred to a psychiatric facility in Ohio, where he’ll be treated and reevaluated every six months. He could be there a maximum of 11 years, according to Scahill.

“It’s up to the doctors,” he said. “He’ll be there for at least until the doctors say he’s ready to go out to the community and even when he is, he’ll be strictly monitored.”

Precious said she and her husband are optimistic he’ll be released into the community in October, which would mark eight months since he’s last seen their three children and 11 months since he’s seen his eldest son from a previous marriage.

She said it’s been an emotional time for their family.

“Realistically, I guess this is the best case scenario,” Precious said. “He’s got another day to look forward to, which is, in six months, he could see himself being released.

“He doesn’t want to see this happen again and obviously he wants to be reunited with his family, so he wants to do whatever he needs to do to make that happen.”