Answers sought after latest London jail death
Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre has had 12 inmates die there since 2009
HENSALL Two days before Christmas, in the midst of a mentalhealth crisis, the adult grandson they had raised since he was six days old called police on himself.
The OPP took him to the hospital in Goderich, where his grandparents thought he was admitted.
The day after Christmas, they found out he was dead, found alone in his cell at the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre.
Now, Judy and Glen Struthers say they’re desperate for answers about how 29-year-old Justin Struthers became the fifth person to die this year at the embattled provincial jail in London — a death toll one area MPP says has “got to stop.”
“It’s a nightmare, I want to wake up,” his grandmother Judy Struthers said through tears Thursday. “I just can’t believe it.” The 29-year-old, a recovering addict who had been released from prison earlier this year after serving a three-year sentence, was found in his cell just before noon on Boxing Day with a blanket wrapped around his neck, his grandmother said.
London police said no foul play is suspected.
Struthers said her grandson, a father of twin girls, had been in a fight with some inmates earlier Dec. 26 and had been kicked in the head. Police told her Struthers was checked out by medical staff at the jail and returned to his cell.
It’s all part of a bleak picture of Struthers’s last 72 hours alive, one his grandparents say began with a manic episode Saturday morning.
Judy Struthers said her grandson wasn’t himself when she went to pick him up at her daughter’s home in Goderich to take him to Seaforth to fetch his methadone, a drug used to help wean addicts off narcotics.
When she arrived, she said, the 29-year-old was acting paranoid and erratic, storming through the house and yelling angrily. He threw his laptop and book bag in the snow bank before taking off down the street without his coat or cellphone, she said.
It was the last time she saw him alive.
“He didn’t know who we were .... He was all over the map, like a psychosis,” she said. “You looked at him and he was vacant, there was nothing there.”
She said her grandson walked to his girlfriend’s house and called the police himself.
Huron OPP arrived and took him to the Goderich hospital over concerns for his mental health and welfare, Const. James Stanley said Thursday.
Struthers was checked out by Alexandra Marine and General Hospital staff and released, police said.
When asked whether Struthers had been admitted or treated at the Goderich facility, a hospital official declined to comment, citing patient confidentiality. He was taken from the hospital into custody on three assault charges Saturday, Stanley said. He declined to provide details, saying that could identify the victims.
Police also allege that Struthers assaulted an officer while being processed at the OPP detachment, leading to another charge.
Struthers made a video court appearance Sunday and was remanded into custody. He was transferred to EMDC that day, Stanley said.
Until officers told the family of Struthers’ death at EMDC late Boxing Day, his grandparents and girlfriend had assumed he was still in the hospital.
“We were going to visit him there the next day,” his grandmother said. “No one told us.”
Their grandson had a troubled past with a long list of mentalhealth issues, his grandparents said. He was born addicted to drugs, had long-term health problems and was hospitalized for harming himself as a teen.
A police chase in Huron County in January 2014 landed him in Millhaven Institution for three years. Struthers was caught after evading police and was found with drugs and a gun his grandmother said he stole to take his own life.
He was released from the Kingston prison to a Toronto halfway house earlier this year, his grandmother said, and moved back to Huron County in September to be closer to his family, especially his two young daughters.
The twins’ Christmas presents from their late father were still under their great-grandparents’ tree.
“They were his world .... He did not want to die,” his grandmother said. “He wanted help, he needed help.”
Struthers wanted to be a barber. He enjoyed drawing and was a generous man with plenty of friends, his grandmother said. He was fiercely loyal and wore his heart on his sleeve. “He was very sensitive,” his grandmother said. “Justin loved everybody.”
His death is the second this month at EMDC, a frequent flashpoint in Ontario’s correctional system whose troubles — violence, overcrowding and death — have spilled into the Ontario legislature under the Liberal government’s watch.
Another inmate, Ronald James Jenkins, died Dec. 9 of a suspected suicide. Twelve EMDC inmates have died in custody at the provincial jail since 2009.
The facility, built to house 150 inmates, regularly holds more than double its capacity. EMDC does not have an infirmary or special unit for unstable or mentally ill inmates.
Instead, inmates with serious mental illness are housed in segregation, where cells are checked more regularly by guards.
The troubles at EMDC are unacceptable and have gone on too long, said MPP Rick Nicholls, the corrections critic for the Progressive Conservatives.
“It’s got to stop,” said Nicholls, the Chatham-Kent-Essex MPP.
“Right now, corrections officers are handcuffed in a sense. They’re not able to do the job that I know they want to simply because this government isn’t providing them with the resources they need.”
Nicholls said with all the talk of boosting mental-health care in Ontario, some attention needs to be focused on extending help to inmates as well.
“We cannot continue to have these deaths in detention centres,” he said.
With a funeral planned Monday, Struthers’s grandparents were awaiting the autopsy results and are vowing to push for answers and action to guard against a repeat of what they consider a preventable death at the jail.
“No matter what happens, this is not the end. I don’t care if it takes 10 years,” his grandmother said.