Forensic pathology unit closure endangered public

Police and family didn’t know if Gladys Little was murdered for four days

With a killer on the loose, the public was unknowingly in danger for four days due to the closing of Hamilton’s forensic pathology unit.

The danger was so great that police issued a rare notice to warn the public of the risk.

From the time the body of Gladys Little, 79, was found in her downtown apartment on May 16 until her autopsy in Toronto on May 20 determined her death was a homicide, her killer was at large and the community was unaware.

Since the Hamilton Regional Forensic Pathology Unit (HRFPU) was forced to close in March, autopsies have been done in Toronto. Police, politicians, doctors and hospital administrators have slammed the closure, predicting it would cause delays that would impede homicide investigations and further traumatize families of homicide victims.

That four-day delay in this city’s latest homicide left Hamilton police hamstrung as they waited to learn if they were dealing with a natural death or a murder.

The seemingly arbitrary and senseless killing of Gladys, a retired nurse, was such a public safety concern that, on May 23, the major crime unit alerted the public to a pending first-degree murder arrest warrant for their prime suspect; Larissa Shingebis, 26.

“Due to the random and violent actions of Shingebis in the murder of Gladys Little, the Hamilton Police Service have decided to release her name and photo for public safety reasons prior to the warrant being issued.”

Shingebis, who is presumed innocent, has a history of violence. She was arrested May 24 after a shelter worker recognized her from the news and contacted police to report she was staying there.

Those post-autopsy steps — the public warning, the warrant and arrest — might have happened faster had Gladys’ death been examined by a forensic pathologist in Hamilton. The way it used to be. Here, autopsies in cases of suspected homicide were typically done within 24 hours.

“I would say a four-day turnaround doesn’t help the investigation,” says Det. Sgt. Peter Thom, who is overseeing the murder investigation. “My only interactions where such delays have occurred have been when they have been conducted in Toronto. When we had the HRFPU, I never experienced this type of delay.”

Dr. Elena Bulakhtina, a forensic pathologist with the Hamilton unit, says a four-day wait is unacceptable.

“This is not the high-quality service we were promised,” she says. “When our unit was open, an autopsy would have been done the next day — weekend or not. It doesn’t matter.”

Cheryl Mahyr, issues manager for the Office of the Chief Coroner, says there are acceptable reasons why it could take four days for autopsy results.

“Using the technology that is available to us at the provincial forensic pathology unit … autopsies take at least two days to complete. A number of factors can extend that time, including the time of day that the body arrives at our facility and the number/types of cases on the roster, which can extend the time it takes to complete the examination.”

Last year, the HRFPU was ordered closed by Ontario’s chief coroner, Dr. Dirk Huyer, and chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Pollanen.

They decided that all of Hamilton’s more than 1,300 yearly death investigations would be done at the Ontario Forensic Pathology Unit in Toronto. Hamilton did its last forensic autopsy in March.

The move is steeped in controversy.

The official reason for closing the unit has been that it was behind on paperwork. The unit’s caseload had grown considerably in recent years with few new resources allocated to allow it to catch up.

But as reporting by The Spectator revealed, Huyer and Pollanen announced the closure at the same time the provincial Death Investigation Oversight Council was investigating a complaint against them from a former director of the Hamilton unit.

This is not the first time Thom has been critical of the decision to close the unit.

Shortly after the move was announced, the autopsy of a Hamilton teen stabbing victim was moved to Toronto. That decision also caused a delay, which Thom said hampered the investigation and added to the family’s grief because they had to wait longer for answers and to retrieve the body.

Gladys’s family has also had to wait.

On May 16, she didn’t answer her phone. Concerned family came and found her dead inside her seventh-floor unit at 4 p.m.

It was unclear to police how she died, until the first few minutes of her autopsy revealed her death was caused by someone else.

Shingebis was seen leaving Gladys’s building the day before her body was discovered. The closure of the HRFPU means a forensic pathologist isn’t likely to attend the scene. Perhaps that would have been beneficial in this case.

Most importantly, public safety was jeopardized as a killer wandered our streets without us knowing.