‘Something was terribly wrong’
Michael MacIsaac’s wife testifies at first day of coroner’s inquest
The day Michael MacIsaac left his home and headed out into the cold December morning, naked and in crisis, was a chaotic one.
His wife, Marianne, had done everything she could to try to keep him inside, but, as she tried to restrain him and get him back into bed, Michael pushed back.
He was determined to leave the house, but Marianne couldn’t make much sense of anything else her husband of five years was saying.
As Marianne’s sister arrived at the house, he pushed past her and made it outside on the residential street in Ajax, on Dec. 2, 2013.
Michael MacIsaac would ultimately be shot dead on the street by Durham police Const. Brian Taylor.
At the first day of the coroner’s inquest into Michael’s death, on Monday, Marianne MacIsaac testified that she knew her husband had had an epileptic seizure the day before he was shot and was exhausted, spending much of the day in bed.
The next day, Dec. 2, she woke Michael up long enough so he could reach a coworker to say he wouldn’t be going to work, before going back to bed. Marianne eventually made her way into her home office to work.
Within hours, a clearly disoriented Michael was walking by her desk, complete- ly naked.
“He was very modest; he never walked around the house like that,” Marianne testified.
She was able to coax him back into the bedroom, “where I grabbed hold of his arms. He was upset, he wanted to leave. I got hit a few times. It wasn’t intentional for him to hurt me; he just wanted to leave.
“I knew something was terribly wrong. This wasn’t something I knew to expect with a seizure.”
Marianne said she was screaming in panic, worried about what would happen if Michael left the house, when her sister, Violet Madjarian, arrived.
“She wasn’t aware of anything. She as- sumed he was attacking me,” Marianne said, reiterating several times that her husband had never harmed her or anyone else before.
Michael knocked Marianne’s sister down, hitting her several times, before bolting out of the house, with Marianne unable to stop him, she testified.
She said, on Monday, that she had “pleaded” with her sister not to call 911, but to no avail. The lengthy call was played at the inquest, where Marianne’s sister, between sobs, says to dispatch at one point: “I hope you killed him,” saying several times that Michael had attacked them.
“I can assure you,” Marianne testified Monday, “she did not want harm to come to him. She was hysterical and she regrets this call immensely.”
Not long after leaving his home, a naked Michael was shot dead by Taylor.
Ontario’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), cleared Taylor of criminal wrongdoing.
The MacIsaac family disputes the SIU’s version of events, which includes the observation that Michael was still wielding a broken table leg when he was shot.
Michael’s sister, Joanne MacIsaac, came to the inquest with a plea to the five-member jury: No more recommendations for arming all front-line officers with Tasers.
“In my opinion, the people who are being shot and killed by police are not the people shooting back; they are the vulnerable sector of society,” said Joanne MacIsaac, the first witness on the stand.
Her brother was a kind and gentle person who loved to tease his five sisters in a close-knit Irish Catholic family in Newfoundland, Joanne said. She said he didn’t want many people to know about his seizures because he was worried he would be judged.
She said there’s a need for detailed recommendations about deescalation tactics, such as having po- lice officers move more slowly and not be so quick to shout at people who are clearly not responding.
“I don’t hate police officers,” she said on the stand. “I know it’s difficult to control a situation.”
MacIsaac voiced concern with the effect a Taser might possibly have had on her brother following his seizure.
A recommendation to arm frontline officers with Tasers was recently made by the jury at the coroner’s inquest into the Toronto police shooting death of Andrew Loku. It had been proposed by the Toronto Police Association.
The MacIsaac inquest continues Tuesday and is expected to last up to three weeks.