Inquest underway into Kelvin Sawa jail death
A corner’s inquest into the death of a Port Colborne man heard from his sister on the first day of testimony.
Lisa Quesnelle said that in the summer of 2011 she was getting ready to head to Niagara from her home in Oakville to bail her brother Kelvin Sawa out of jail and to act as his surety.
She never made it to court. Instead, she headed to hospital in Niagara
Falls, after her brother hanged himself in his cell at Niagara
Detention Centre in Thorold.
Sawa, a taxi-cab driver, never regained consciousness.
“He lived a simple life,” Quesnelle said Monday. “He didn’t have much, and he didn’t ask for much, but he would help anyone who needed it.”
The inquest is being presided over by Dr. David Eden with Karen Shea as counsel to the coroner. Lawyers representing Sawa’s family and the Ministry of Correctional Services are also taking part.
The jury is made up of two men and three women. They will be asked to make recommendations aimed at preventing similar deaths when the inquest concludes. They are not there to assign blame, Eden told members in his opening remarks.
Quesnelle said Sawa had been in the detention centre for three days while he tried to organize a surety to help him make bail. He was reluctant at first to accept his sister’s offer to move to Oakville because he wanted to find his own surety so he could stay in his adopted hometown of Port Colborne near his friends.
It didn’t work out. One surety had a criminal record. Another had a teenaged son, and the Crown had charged Sawa with a sexual offence involving a youngster.
Shea presented an agreed statement of fact to open the inquest.
She said Sawa was beaten and bloodied by other inmates in the protective custody range on Aug. 15, 2011.
He was spat upon and taunted. There were reports an inmate forced a stick of deodorant down his throat. He was eventually given a noose and told to use it.
Two of the inmates, Jeremy
Hall and Cale Rose, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Sawa’s death. Rose, who handed Sawa the noose, took a deal from the Crown and agreed to testify against Hall, the ringleader.
Hall was the first to beat Sawa, a pounding that took place in the shower area, away from the detention centre’s surveillance cameras.
Hall also fashioned the noose, which one witness said was twined for added strength.
Hall pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder of Sawa, but the trial ended in a hung jury. The Crown decided to retry the case. At that point, Hall agreed to a lesser charge.
Testimony at Hall’s first trial revealed disturbing details about the range. The evidence painted a picture of a place where the inmates, led by Hall, made their own rules. Contraband, such as the shredded bed sheets used for the noose, was ignored by the guards, one of whom took an active role in setting up the attack.
Monday afternoon the inquest heard from one of Canada’s top forensic pathologists, Dr. John Fernandes. Fernandes, who is the director of forensic pathology at Hamilton General Hospital, detailed Sawa’s injuries and the cause of death for the jury.
The inquest continues today at the Welland courthouse.