Coroner’s inquest: lodging home ‘not equipped’
Inquiry examines what led to 28-year-old’s death on mall roof
A lodging home that evicted a man who was later found dead on the roof of Jackson Square in downtown Hamilton didn’t have the expertise to respond to his serious mental illness, his twin brother says.
“I completely believe that the lodging home was not equipped enough. Like, they did not have the training to handle people with severe schizophrenia,” Richard Csanyi told a coroner’s inquest Wednesday.
After losing his room in March 2020, amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Attila Csanyi stayed for a spell with his father, but eventually disappeared, leading to his family’s desperate search to find him.
While they kept looking, an unidentified man was found dead atop Jackson Square on May 2. On June 5, he was identified as Attila.
“He went under the radar because of who he was, homeless,” Richard said.
The circumstances of the 28-yearold’s overdose death — including his struggle to maintain housing and medical treatment — are the focus of the inquest, which is scheduled for three weeks.
Richard opened his testimony with a personal statement that touched on his initial hope that Attila had been “just lost,” the abuse they endured as children in foster care, and the well-loved, charismatic person he was.
“Attila was not only my twin brother, he was a best friend. He was a protector. He a star athlete. He was a Boy Scout. He was a Christian who went to church growing up.”
His hope is that the inquest will lead to changes that “prevent similar tragedies,” Richard said.
He traces Attila’s demise to his eviction on March 11, 2020, from Sampaguita Lodge and Rest Home, a residential care facility (RCF) on Bay Street South.
Inquests, which involve juries weighing testimony, are meant to result in recommendations to improve systems and organizations with the goal of preventing similar deaths but aren’t intended to assign blame.
Attila’s death overlaps with a deepening homelessness crisis in Hamilton, with tents pitched in parks, a lack of supportive, affordable housing, and packed shelters struggling with the added pressures of untreated mental illness and a toxic drug supply.
On Day 2 of the inquiry, Richard, prompted by inquest counsel, described how he and his brother lived with their parents and siblings in subsidized housing before the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) scooped them up and put them in foster care.
“We were a pretty chaotic family. I mean there a lot of kids running around,” he said about the Toronto household. “But my parents were loving, caring, compassionate.”
His mother, who suffered from post-traumatic-stress and bipolar disorders, had also been in foster care and didn’t want her boys to go through the same ordeal, he recalled.
“We were hiding in cupboards and cabinets, like hiding all over the house. We didn’t want to go.”
At age six, they were placed in a
Scarborough foster home where they endured physical, sexual and mental abuse at the hands of a teenager living in the residence, Richard told The Spectator in 2020.
He’d tie them up and throw them down the stairs repeatedly, suffocate them with pillows, carve into their skin, pour urine in their eyes, Richard told the inquest.
The smaller boys tried fighting back and discussed strategies, such as being “bad kids,” to spur their removal from the home.
“We would sleep in the same beds back to back, so if one of us was going through abuse, we both would be going through it.”
That “bond” between them, forged under duress, persisted throughout their lives, said Richard, noting the trauma from that time still haunts him.
“At least Attila’s at peace with not having to have those thoughts in his mind anymore.”
At age eight, the boys were placed in another foster home, this time with a loving family in Lindsay, Ont., where Attila’s charisma blossomed, along with a talent for pitching that showed big-league promise.
It wasn’t until his late teens that the symptoms of schizophrenia started to show in Attila, Richard said. “We actually thought he was possessed at certain times. We didn’t know what was going on.”
He and Attila cycled through “Band Aid” medical responses and housing arrangements in the Greater Toronto Area that didn’t last, while Richard, a bricklayer by trade, struggled to keep his business afloat and be a father to his young daughter.
But in 2018, an extended stay at St.
Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton resulted in a community treatment order (CTO) that involved monthly injections of an antipsychotic medication for Attila. CTOs are agreements between patients and psychiatrists that allow them to live in the community provided they attends appointments, take their medication and abide by other conditions.
That treatment plan had a positive impact, Richard said.
At that time, his brother moved into Denholme Manor, an RCF, a type of private lodging home for people with physical or mental challenges that offers services such as food, laundry and recreation.
Inquest counsel noted Attila’s stay at the Durand neighbourhood home seemed “promising” at first, but staff eventually complained about his “disruptive behaviour,” which led him to Sampaguita on Bay Street South nearly a year later.
There, he shared a room with someone else, which was an issue, said Richard, who evoking the childhood trauma, noted his brother needed something “propped up” on his back to sleep at night. Bedbugs were another problem.
Sampaguita — whose representatives are among 17 witnesses expected to testify during the inquest — cited complaints about hoarding, threatening behaviour and visitors as factors leading to his eviction, the jury heard.
In response, Richard said he never knew Attila to be “an aggressive person in any manner,” but contended staff at the RCF didn’t have the training to respond to his severe condition.
Another shortcoming, the home didn’t involve family in dealing with issues, he added, noting that at one point, staff told him he couldn’t enter to visit his brother.
“The hoarding, the cleanliness, all of those things could have been dealt with if they just incorporated me into the picture.”
The inquest resumes Thursday at 9 a.m.
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The hoarding, the cleanliness, all of those things could have been dealt with if they just incorporated me into the picture.
RICHARD CSANYI