The Lionel Desmond no one saw
Lionel Desmond did not share everything with those tasked to help him. The darkest reaches of his thoughts were kept hidden behind the friendly, conscientious disposition he presented to mental health staff — like the family doctor in New Brunswick, who had signed a form encouraging the Afghan War veteran be allowed to have a firearm and acquisition licence; emergency room doctor Justin Clark, who saw Desmond when he showed up at the St. Martha’s Regional Hospital emergency room on Jan. 1, 2017; and Dr. Faisal Rahman, a psychiatrist who didn’t see a man he thought was about to commit a heinous act of violence against the females in his life. The fatality inquiry, which is being held in the Guysborough Municipal Building, will never get to ask Desmond whether he saw this man in himself. There were the over 90 searches for firearms on his cellphone after his wife, Shanna, asked him to leave their Upper Big Tracadie home after an outburst on Jan. 1, 2017. He didn’t admit those when he told Rahman he didn’t have access to a firearm in the family room of St. Martha’s Regional Hospital emergency department that evening. In that room, 46 hours before the triple murder-suicide, was a front-line soldier from the war in Afghanistan who had become well acquainted with the questions of mental health professionals. Across from him was a psychiatrist whose early career was spent learning and treating the symptoms and struggles of war veterans. The chief of psychiatry for everywhere east of the Pictou County line (including Cape Breton) saw 15 to 20 suicidal people a week at St. Martha’s. After getting a call at about 7:30 p.m. on his cellphone from the emergency room doctor about Desmond, Rahman took a few minutes to do a quick scan over a psychiatric assessment performed by psychiatrist Dr. Ian Slayter a month earlier. That included diagnoses for major depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, post-traumatic brain disorder, borderline delusions regarding his wife and possible attention deficit disorder. It placed Desmond’s suicide risk as low. Rahman began with broad questions: What brought you here? How can we help you? Desmond told him he was there because he'd had a fight with his wife that began after he put their truck in the ditch on New Year’s Eve. He’d pounded a table that morning in anger, startling their 10-year-old daughter Aaliyah and his wife had asked him to leave. He felt really bad about it. He wanted a place to stay for the night and he’d go back home the morning. Rahman dug deeper into the relationship. Without an apparent medical requirement to spend the night in hospital, Rahman made a social admission — a common practice outside of Halifax to help people with nowhere else to stay the night. The next morning, Rahman met with Desmond again, asked if he’d stay another night so he could meet with a social worker the following day. But Desmond wanted to go. On Jan. 3 Desmond returned to the hospital to make an appointment as promised with Slayter for later in the month. That afternoon he legally purchased a Soviet-era assault rifle at Leaves and Limbs in Antigonish, changed into heavy camouflage clothing, parked a kilometre way from his Upper Big Tracadie home on a woods road, snuck up to the back of the home via a path, slashed two tires on Shanna’s truck, then opened the door to the double-wide trailer and went inside. On Jan. 4, Rahman was in the admissions room of St. Martha’s Hospital when news came in of the murder suicide. “I was devastated,” said Rahman.