Conflicting stories on night inmate died
Nicotine, correctional officer don’t agree on what happened day Kinew James died
An inmate and a correctional officer at the Regional Psychiatric Centre gave differing viewpoints about the night inmate Kinew James died in a cell in 2013.
Inmate Serena Nicotine and correctional officer Donna Lee Spence testified Friday at the ongoing coroner’s inquest into the death of James, 35, who suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on Jan. 20, 2013, at the federal psychiatric prison hospital in Saskatoon.
Nicotine, who testified by video link from the federal Prison For Women in Edmonton, said James, who was diabetic, “was practically pleading ” with a nurse to check her blood sugar level in the hours before her death.
Nicotine also said that when she and another inmate insisted a correctional officer help James, the officer told them to “mind (their) own business.”
Nicotine was 15 years old when she and an accomplice brutally murdered North Battleford group home operator Helen Montgomery in 1997. She was sentenced as an adult and has remained in custody ever since, the result of a string of violent incidents behind bars involving staff and inmates.
Nicotine said she and James were close, having served federal prison time together over 14 years at three different institutions. They had also spent months in segregation at the same time, with cells that had only bars between them.
James had been feeling ill the week she died, Nicotine said, adding James felt short of breath and had to leave the library at one point because she felt dizzy and weak. She said she had never before heard James make the strange snoring sounds she made in the hours before her death.
“It was like she was hyperventilating. I said, “Are you having anxiety?’ She was breathing real loud and fast,” Nicotine said.
James pressed the emergency button and pleaded to have her blood sugar level checked, Nicotine said, adding James told her she “felt weird” and told the nurse her heart was beating fast.
Nurse Jackie Kemp came to her cell and told her to drink water.
Nicotine said she heard the strange snoring sound again but could hear that it was diminishing.
“The snoring was going down. It was like she was dying.”
She said another inmate used the emergency call to seek help for James, but a correctional officer told her to “mind her own business.”
Nicotine also said she heard the toilet flush after staff went into James’s cell but before they called a Code Blue; that point was not in her police statement.
Spence testified she regularly spoke with James, who was excited about her upcoming release and setting up a home for herself. “She seemed fine.” Spence said she and a different nurse, Sara Bayani, responded to an emergency call from James’s cell earlier that night. James wasn’t feeling well and Bayani told her to eat an apple, she said.
Other witnesses have said Bayani had been monitoring James’s escalating blood sugar levels throughout the day and had phoned the doctor on call for advice about increasing insulin doses.
The next time James used the emergency bell, around 10:30 p.m., Kemp was on duty. Spence said she went with her to the locked cell, where Kemp told James through the food hatch to drink water.
Spence said inmates can be confident their emergency calls will be addressed. She does not remember talking with Nicotine or other inmates about James that night, she testified.
“I don’t think it happened.” Spence said she had no recollection of an inmate calling the nurse on James’s behalf. Institution records confirm the call was made.
Spence said she doesn’t know if many patients have diabetes and had no opinions about James’s condition that night.
She later acknowledged telling police James had issues with her blood sugar levels, that they were normally high and said “we monitor” them.
Spence said she saw James face down on her bed. She said she doesn’t recall hearing Kemp say James might be faking illness, as Kemp has admitted saying.
Spence performed CPR compressions on James before the ambulance arrived. She said she does not recall going into James’s cell after the ambulance took her away and before she closed the cell and sealed it. She said she does not recall another staff member telling her it was inappropriate for her to go into the cell.