Correctional officers not told of missing drugs
Inquest continues into eight drug-related deaths at Barton Street jail from 2012 to 2016
When Peter McNelis was moved from the fifth floor to the psychiatric unit inside the HamiltonWentworth Detention Centre, correctional officer Isabella Brlek could clearly see the 47year-old was scared and paranoid — he had requested the move for safety.
But she thought it was likely a mental health issue and put in a request for him to see the psychiatrist when he was in the following day, she told an inquest into McNelis’s March 13, 2016, death.
She had no idea that three packages of drugs had gone missing during his arrest in Delhi five days earlier and that the Ontario Provincial Police believed he had ingested them. Nothing about the missing drugs was included on any paperwork when he was admitted to the jail.
“I honestly thought (it was) a psychiatric issue,” she said.
She later added: “I was not aware of drugs . ... He wouldn’t have gone to (unit) 3A, he would have gone to segregation, to a dry cell.”
Brlek is a veteran correctional officer and said she enjoys working in the psychiatric unit, where she feels she can often do more to help inmates. She said she tried to reassure McNelis that he was going to be OK. She knew him from work at another jail years earlier.
A little over an hour after McNelis was moved to a cell on his own on 3A Right, Brlek said she found him standing, blood on the floor and on his hands, staring “like he was looking through me,” she said.
When he wouldn’t respond, she called for a Code White (medical emergency). After other officers and nurses ran in, he refused to sit and was forced to the ground, where he began hitting his head off the wall and floor.
Staff pulled a mattress under him, turned him on his stomach, and restrained his hands and legs.
Keegan Gracias, one of the correctional officers who ran to the Code White, said that at that point, McNelis went purple and became unresponsive. His mattress was dragged out of his cell, and staff performed CPR, a nurse An exhibit at the inquest into drugrelated deaths at the HamiltonWentworth Detention Centre shows plastic bags found in the large intestine of an inmate who died at the jail.
administered naloxone and an ambulance was called. But it was too late.
An autopsy would later show he died of combined drug toxicity from cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl. Three plastic packages of drugs were found lodged in his intestine.
“It happened so fast,” Brlek testified, overcome with emotion.
The day after McNelis’s death, social worker Salomeh Mohajer said she debriefed three inmates from the 3A dormitory, where McNelis spent about 15 minutes before moving to the cell where he died.
They told Mohajer that McNelis claimed to have packages of drugs in his body that he was having trouble passing. He said cellmates on the fifth floor had beaten him the night before trying to get him to release the drugs.
McNelis was in pain, sweaty, frustrated and jumpy, the inmates told her. One inmate said he seemed high.
On Monday, the inquest heard from OPP officers who arrested and supervised McNelis.
They knew the drugs were missing and took steps to watch him more closely, including placing him in a dry cell (no running water).
The special constables who transported him to court the next day told the inquest Tuesday that they believed McNelis had been cleared by a doctor. They did not know he had actually been discharged from hospital after refusing treatment.
“I think communication is key,” Brlek said, when talking about what is needed to prevent future deaths.
Failure in communication has been a common theme in testimony at the inquest, which is examining eight drug-related deaths of inmates at the Barton Street jail. In addition to McNelis, the inquest is looking at the deaths of Louis Unelli, William Acheson, Trevor Burke, Stephen Neeson, David Gillan, Julien Walton and Marty Tykoliz, who all died between 2012 and 2016.
The inquest previously heard that Gillan, who died of an apparent suicide by overdose on May 18, 2015, had sent text messages indicating he was suicidal before being arrested in Toronto. That information was never shared with the jail, which did not place him on suicide watch.
On Tuesday, the inquest heard from Hamilton police officer Scott Reid, who transported Gillan back to Hamilton after his surety revoked bail and he was charged with breaching bail.
Reid explained that he was aware of the text message information, but said when he arrested Gillan and questioned him about whether he was suicidal, Gillan “adamantly denied” wanting to harm himself.
He described Gillan as calm and quiet. Had he found him to be suicidal, he would have taken him to hospital instead of to custody, Reid testified.
The inquest continues Wednesday.