‘My beautiful son is dead’: Family of inmate speak out
Parents recall winter night when they were told their son had died in an ‘altercation.’ Months later, they know little else about his death
One winter night in December 2016, Ghulam Faqiri answered a knock at the door to see two police officers in his driveway. It had been 11 days since he had seen his second-born son, Soleiman, who had been arrested on Dec. 4 for charges of aggravated assault, assault and uttering threats.
His older brother, Yusuf, said Soleiman, who had suffered with schizophrenia for the past 11 years, was the Faqiri family’s “gentle giant.” He was his mother’s best friend, his father’s helper, his two younger brothers’ mentor, his sister’s protector, his own idol. Soleiman wanted to be the greatest scholar in the world.
But he was sick. He had gotten sicker and needed help, and, seeing the police officers at his doorstep, Ghulam had a feeling of dread. In his broken English, the 53-year-old Afghan-Canadian man asked police: “Is my son dead?”
He translated their answer in Farsi for his wife of more than three decades, Maryam, with help from Yusuf. The police told them there was an “altercation” between Soleiman, 30, and correctional officers on Dec.15 in the Lindsay, Ont., jail where he was being held on remand, awaiting a mental-health assessment.
It’s been 10 months since Soleiman died and two months since a coroner’s report found he suffered more than 50 physical injuries from a three-hour long confrontation with prison officers before dying in a segregation cell. That is all the family knows. That night, Yusuf said he sat in the living room with his father and younger brothers for an hour, asking — begging — for more information from the two police officers. Maryam, he said, paced back and forth in the next room, crying. She hadn’t slept properly since her son had been taken to prison — and hasn’t since he died. “My son, my beautiful son is dead,” she kept repeating. “My baby, my baby, I miss you so much.”
Since that night, the police have conducted a forensic examination of the death scene; interviewed the responding paramedic and dozens of correctional staff members and inmates; reviewed the transcript of the 911 call; reviewed video footage; established a timeline of events; and spoken to the coroner.
In emails to the Star, both the police and the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services (MCSCS) offered their deep condolences to the family. They did not say when the investigation will conclude.
“The safety and security of our inmates and staff is our top priority,” said an MCSCS representative, who couldn’t comment further because of the ongoing investigation.
“I am unable to estimate how long this may take,” said Sgt. Tom Hickey of the Kawartha Lakes Police in an email. “We are committed to conducting a full, frank and fair investigation, but the trade-off is the length of time in which it takes.”
“It has been a priority to conclude this investigation in a professional and completely thorough manner,” Hickey wrote, “with the secondary priority of concluding this investigation as quickly as possible.”
The ongoing police investigation is also a factor for Dr. David Eden, regional supervising coroner for inquests, who is still considering an inquest into Soleiman’s death.
“(The police) have been responsive,” said Edward Marrocco, the family’s lawyer, “They just haven’t told (us) anything substantive.”
At the last update, on Sept. 26, Marrocco was told the police were waiting for a legal opinion from the Office of the Crown Attorney regarding criminal charges.
The police said they would know in a few weeks. The delay in the investigation, they explained in an email to him, was “due to the complexity of the case, and the thoroughness of the review.”
“If there’s complexity here I wish someone would explain to me what it is,” Marrocco said.
In the spring of 2005, Soleiman was in a car crash and diagnosed with schizophrenia soon after. Medical research suggests there is an increased risk of developing schizophrenia after a traumatic brain injury, but there are many other factors that could trigger the condition in a 19-year-old male.
“He was not himself. He became more anxious, less focused,” said Sohrab, 29, the middle brother. “He became not the brother we grew up with.”
Maryam’s three sons say that Soleiman had a special relationship with his mother, but on the afternoon that he was arrested, Maryam and Soleiman had a disagreement. He had been struggling with his illness — he had refused to take his medication since March 2016 and had started to have hallucinations — a common symptom of schizophrenia, along with delusions, disorganized thinking and apathy. That day, he was confused — he didn’t recognize Maryam.
According to Durham Regional Police, he allegedly pushed and spat on her. When another woman came out to confront him, he allegedly stabbed her, which resulted in minor injuries.
From the onset, his fitness to face the charges was questioned because of his mental illness.
Ghulam and Maryam tried to visit their son three times in prison and each time they were denied access to their son. Yusuf, 33, and Sohrab went to both court and jail, too.
On Dec. 12, Soleiman appeared in an Oshawa courtroom via a video link from jail. It was the first time Yusuf had seen Soleiman in a week; he could see his brother was not doing well. He told the court the family had struggled to place him in a health-care facility and get him the medical attention he needed — Soleiman needed help in a medical institution, he said, not time in a jail.
A nurse told the presiding justice that Soleiman wasn’t speaking to anyone, refusing his medicine, not eating properly, and lying on the floor, making no eye contact.
When the Crown attorney asked him if he had ever seen Soleiman like this in the 11years of his illness, Yusuf replied: “This is much worse.”
Three days after that hearing, before his mental-health evaluation could be performed, Soleiman died.
On Dec.18, 2016, the Faqiris brought Soleiman’s body home. They buried him that same afternoon at Pine Ridge Cemetery in an unmarked grave, in the shadow of a giant tree.
Today, there’s a profound emptiness in the Faqiri’s suburban family home in Whitby — a house they moved into five months after Soleiman died. The house Soleiman had grown up in, a short distance away, was too difficult to live in anymore.
Ghulam came to Canada early 1993 as a refugee from Kabul, Afghanistan, to escape the violence and uncertainty of the Afghan Civil War that began after the Soviet Union withdrew from the country. His family joined him several months later; they became Canadian citizens a decade later. “We did not expect to come to this country as refugees and bury our brother” said Yusuf, the oldest Faqiri sibling.
Soleiman was an intelligent kid — a straight-A student who was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of Waterloo. He was a good athlete, too, captain of his high school rugby team and a strong football player — he’d race his brothers every chance he’d get and tease them every time he won, which, Sohrab said, was almost always.
Now he exists just in memories: A late night out, just the brothers, at a restaurant in Pickering, eating wings; a water-gun fight that still makes them laugh; the shoes he bought their nieces and nephews a month before he died.
“Without him, it’s different. I lost a big muscle out of this family,” said Ali, the youngest sibling. “It’s hard to explain.”
His mother visits his grave every day. The tombstone that will be placed there next month says, “You are loved beyond words and missed without measure.”
“He shouldn’t have died like this,” Maryam said.