17-year-old found joy in ‘the smallest things’
Sister fondly remembers brother as animal lover who was always on the go
Justin Sangiuliano was in an Oshawa hospital on life-support when his sister Zabrina arrived after an eighthour drive from her Timmins-area home.
“I kind of knew,” she said, referring to her 17-year-old developmentally disabled brother’s grim prognosis. “The nurse explained all the machines to me. It was nice of them to do that.”
Zabrina, 22, got the call the night before from staff who ran her brother’s group home.
“They said there was an incident. Because my brother was autistic he’s prone to have — I don’t know what the technical term is — but he’s prone to freak-outs,” she said. “They performed the proper restraint . . . and then all of a sudden . . . they said he’d calmed down . . . and then he wasn’t breathing.”
On April 21, five days later, doctors declared Justin brain-dead and took him off life support.
Zabrina, who gave the eulogy at her brother’s funeral the following week, says it is all a blur now.
Justin was a big, handsome kid with black hair and dark eyes, who loved to run, his sister recalled. From the moment he woke up and put his feet on the floor, he was on the go.
During visits to his grandparents’ rural property in Matheson, about an hour east of Timmins, Justin’s favourite pastime was to gallop back and forth along a trail that led to a little cabin and a blueberry patch, Zabrina said. “He didn’t speak too much to people he didn’t know. But he spoke a lot to me and my sister and my grandmother.”
Zabrina laughs when she recalls how he talked about “anything that popped into his head.”
He was particularly drawn to animals, especially his grandparents’ dog and cat. “He would just try to cuddle with them all the time. Even if they didn’t want to.”
Justin had a way of making his family stop and notice the beauty of nature. “He would become excited by the smallest things,” Zabrina recalled. “A butterfly, a flower, anything.”
Another passion was the blue CCM single-speed bicycle that their mother used to ride as a child, Zabrina said. “Even when it had a flat tire, he would try to ride it.”
Justin, along with Zabrina’s younger sister, now 20, were born with developmental disabilities to parents who were struggling with their own issues. Children’s aid played an active role in their young lives, she said.
When Zabrina turned 10, she went to live with her maternal grandparents. Her younger sister was adopted by her paternal grandmother and her partner. But Justin’s behaviour was “too difficult” and he became a Crown ward, Zabrina said.
At age 11, Justin was placed in a specialized group home for developmentally disabled boys in Barrie and when he turned14, he moved to a home in Oshawa run by Enterphase Child and Family Services.
But the siblings remained close, “and he was very much part of the family,” Zabrina said.
He visited during school holidays at Christmas and March Break and usually spent a week with the family in the summer.
Justin, who would have turned18 in January, often talked about wanting to live closer to home. The family was hoping he could move to an adult group home closer to Timmins next year.
“He loved the workers (at his group home) and he loved his friends,” Zabrina said. “He’s a very loving person. He just missed his family.
“I knew he would never be able to live on his own and that he would not technically be an adult, because he has a hard time taking care of himself,” she added. “But I was looking forward to having him closer so we could have a lot more visiting time.”
Zabrina completed a college diploma last spring and works at Best Buy in Timmins while looking for work in her field as a processing controls technician. She is troubled by the serious occurrence report filed by Justin’s group home.
She can’t understand how staff didn’t notice her brother was having medical problems while they were physically restraining him. “If it was done properly, like they say, then someone would have noticed something was wrong with him.
“I understand that some situations are worse than others,” she said. “But I can’t see a situation where you would have to pin someone to the ground. I makes me quite mad, actually.”
Justin would have the occasional angry outburst while at home, just like his developmentally disabled sister. “But we just leave them alone. We let them go downstairs, have a little cry. Sometimes they’ll punch the wall or something. But it’s never been directed at anyone,” Zabrina said.
They calm down on their own after a “freak-out” and often will apologize, she said. “We’re not violent people in our family. We don’t restrain anyone or anything like that. It’s a little weird for us to see that kind of thing (in a report),” she added.
Zabrina and the rest of her family are hoping the coroner’s report, which they have requested this week, will tell them what happened to Justin. “We’re a pretty strong family,” she said. “We try to push through. We do wish we had answers. But we know what’s done is done and we’ve just got to take it from here. It would be nice to know he was well taken care of.”