Anger at PC over four-minute search for man
Gavin Egan, 34, drowned in Peasholm Lake
The family of a man who died in Peasholm Lake are “fuming” that the police officer who carried out a four-minute search to find him said she would do the same again. Gavin Francis Egan, 34, of Scarborough, was found dead in the lake at around 11.20am on February 24 last year.
But an inquest, held at Scarborough Town Hall last Wednesday, heard that a dog walker had pulled him from the lake eight hours earlier. He said he ran to his home to get his mobile phone to call an ambulance.
An Independent Police Complaint Commission investigation report, released two days after the inquest, found that PC Helen Hardie, who was called to the scene, had not taken all reasonable steps to investigate the incident and did not undertake an effective search.
But at the inquest into Mr Egan’s death, when asked by coroner Michael Oakley if “in hindsight” she would have done anything differently if presented with the same scenario again, she said she wouldn’t.
This was a comment that angered Mr Egan’s mother, Lesley Shields, and caused her lawyer to write to the force asking Chief Constable Dave Jones to explain the force’s position.
Mrs Shields said: “She has showed no remorse at all in my view and it has left me fuming at the way we have been treated since Gavin’s death. She’s obviously not learned any lessons either, she’s not willing to as she was bold enough to stand there in front of us and effectively say she’d done nothing wrong.”
In the investigator’s opinion, PC Hardie, of North Yorkshire Police, had a case to answer for gross misconduct for not taking all reasonable steps. But after North Yorkshire Police argued that the allegations should only be described as misconduct, the IPCC commisioner agreed and the officer was issued with a written warning.
The watchdog’s investigation found that a four-minute search was carried out, no en quiries were made with the dogwalker and she had relied on incorrect information from the call log that Mr Egan had “run off ” despite the paramedic’s view he would be incapable of such actions in the freezing temperatures.
Following the inquest, Deputy Chief Constable Tim Madgwick offered the force’s deepest sympathies to Mr Egan’s family and says he hopes they “now have a degree of closure”.
He said in a statement that it was “important that our response to the incident is seen in the context of the events on the morning that Mr Egan died”, adding that the coroner ruled that the seach carried out by PC Hardie was reasonable.
Mr Madgwick said the initial call was made to the ambulance service, who searched for Mr Egan for 38 minues and that police were alerted 30 minutes after the original call and arrived 15 minutes later.