Police botched case of woman found dead in hotel chute: lawyer

REGINA — A lawyer representing the family of a Regina woman who died after plunging 10 storeys down a hotel laundry chute says the investigation into her death was botched and race played a factor.

“What the police did was horrible,” Tony Merchant told CTV News on Friday. “If that had been a white woman working at SaskPower, they would have been all over the investigation.”

Merchant is representing the First Nations family of Nadine Machiskinic, 29, in a civil lawsuit against the Delta Hotel.

A coroner’s jury of three men and three women ruled Thursday it could not determine the cause of Machiskinic’s death. They made just one recommendation — that laundry chutes in hotels should always be kept locked and only ever be accessible to staff.

Regina Police Chief Evan Bray admitted Friday that mistakes were made in the investigation, but said he’s confident in the police force’s findings.

Bray said from the start of the investigation, police faced challenges because paramedics didn’t believe police needed to be involved.

He said other hurdles included lost evidence and delayed toxicology reports. Investigators were also unable to locate two men captured on hotel surveillance video who were considered people of interest.

The inquest heard blood tests showed Machiskinic had alcohol, methadone and three other drugs in her system, as well as high levels of sleeping medication.

An empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills was found along with her body.

Toxicology expert Chris Keddy testified that because Machiskinic was a long-time drug user and had a high tolerance, she would have been capable of climbing into the laundry chute.

However, Machiskinic’s family has questioned how she fit through the opening of the chute, which was only 53 centimetres wide, and why it took police 60 hours to launch an investigation.

Merchant said that if the victim had been white, police “would have concluded it was probably a murder. They would have known who the two men were. They would have got the tapes. They would have been talking to the staff.

“This was an Indian woman — reluctantly, we’re going to look into it, and the result is no result,” Merchant said.