Prisoner charged in fellow inmate’s death at Saskatchewan Penitentiary

PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. The mother of a 37-year-old man who died in custody at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary this week says her family is devastated.

Christopher Van Camp was found dead in his cell just after 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.

Fellow inmate Tyler Vandewater, 28, has been charged with second-degree murder.

“We are in shock and we’re angry,” Van Camp’s mother, Lauren Laithwaite, told CTV News from her home in Calgary Friday.

“Right now we’re just making arrangements for him to come home so we can put him to rest, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Van Camp had been serving a more than fiveyear prison sentence for armed robbery, fraud, committing theft and break and enter, according to the Correctional Service of Canada.

Laithwaite said her son had actually been paroled on April 24 and returned to Calgary with conditions that he couldn’t use alcohol or drugs, but within a month he had relapsed and overdosed.

Laithwaite said her younger son found Van Camp near death, and he ended up in hospital on life support, spending five days in a coma.

“He was on a full ventilator that was breathing 100 per cent for him and he also had pneumonia of the lungs that had to be dealt with that was very serious,” she said.