75-minute video shows last gasps of Ashley Smith

Viewed in full in public for first time at inquest into death of teen inmate

TORONTO — For the first time, the video depicting the asphyxiation of teenager Ashley Smith in a federal prison has been played in full in public.

Until Monday, when a five-member jury watched the 75-minute video at the coroner’s inquest examining Ashley’s Oct. 19, 2007, death at Kitchener’s Grand Valley Institution for Women, only limited excerpts had been played, and only in court proceedings and a CBC documentary.

It is the first 15 minutes or so which are most shocking because what they document is the young woman’s dying, as the pauses between her laboured breaths grew everlong until they finally stopped.

The camera was then being operated by Valentino (Rudy) Burnett, a correctional officer who was temporarily working at Kitchener’s Grand Valley Institution for Women.

Burnett, who testified Monday, had been called in because staff at the prison were burned out — in part, probably, because Ashley was such a difficult inmate who sucked up institutional resources like a sponge.

The 19-year-old, who was institutionalized for much of her adolescence in the youth system in her native New Brunswick before being transferred to the federal adult system, had developed a dangerous habit of “tying up” — fashioning homemade ligatures, secreting them on her body and then wrapping them around her neck.

She had done so again this fall morning, and when Burnett’s camera first found her, was lying face down on the bare concrete floor of her cell in the segregation unit, her body wedged between her metal bed, which was bolted down, and a wall of the dismal 7-foot by 10.5-foot cell that was her home.

She appeared to be wearing the heavy, hardto-cut segregation “gown” — it is white and quilted, like a bad prison joke of a wedding dress — worn by those on suicide watch or given to self-injury.

Burnett, as an extra hand, was told to run the camera, standard protocol whenever guards entered an inmate’s cell because such entries are deemed “use of force” incidents and have to be recorded.

But on this occasion, though, at least four guards, at times five, in addition to Burnett had gathered outside Ashley’s cell, they appeared paralyzed, and waited for almost 10 minutes before rushing in to cut off the ligature.

During those 10 minutes, the young woman’s wheezing turned to gasping, the pauses between the tortured gasps lengthened, and the infrequent, irregular and ever-soslight movements of her head stopped.

Though jurors have not yet heard the details, they have been told that the guards’ orders abruptly changed in the weeks before Ashley died.

Where always before, they had rushed into her cell at the first sign of distress to remove the ligature or whatever weapon she was using to hurt herself, prison management had changed its tune and now wanted guards to enter Ashley’s cell only if she had stopped breathing.

Several actually had been disciplined for going into her cell too soon, and for showing the teen too much human warmth.

What the jurors haven’t learned about yet — the inquest is, in effect, starting at the end of the story and only once all the evidence is in on the day of Ashley’s death will it reverse gears and go back to the beginning — is the frequency with which Ashley tied up.

But it was occasionally as often as six times a day, usually at least once a day. It is reasonable to expect that some of the guards who were outside her cell that last morning — peering in through the meal slot of her door, trying to see enough of her to monitor her as Burnett taped through the window — had seen her in similar distress before.

Indeed, vessels in Ashley’s face and eyes had burst, her face had gone mottled, during other tying up incidents. Yet always before her guards had gone in time.

It took one guard only a couple of minutes to become alarmed. “It’s been long enough, Ashley,” he can be heard saying on the video. “You need to take that off.”

Seconds later, he said, “Hey, sit up so you can come over so I can cut it off.”

More seconds passed and the guard asked, “Ashley, can you get it off yourself ?”

About eight minutes later, five correctional officers entered the cell, removed the ligature and marched out.

From that point, the guards grew frantic.

Within a minute, as Ashley failed to respond, they were back in her cell, one shouting for a nurse, others banging about noisily (clearly hoping to rouse the teen to consciousness), a female guard crying her name 11 times in a row.

What followed then were shouts of, “Is she OK?”, “We need a mask right now!”, “No, and I don’t feel a pulse!” and “Jesus Christ, I haven’t had my CPR training in 11 years!”

The guards began resuscitation, awkwardly, with one doing mouth-tomouth through a mask, another starting chest compressions, all amid fevered prayers of, “Come on hon — breathe!”

Firefighters and paramedics arrived, and took over CPR.

But it appeared Ashley never breathed again. She was put on a stretcher, firemen and paramedics still working on her, and carried out through the prison to a waiting ambulance and the pinky morning light of the day she would never see.