Better mental-health tools needed in Windsor area, coroner’s inquest hears

Gaps and barriers in how police, hospitals and community crisis workers interact and communicate with each other may have played a role in events leading up to an armed standoff that ended in the suicide of a Windsor husband and father.

A coroner’s inquest into the Sept. 15, 2017, death of Chad Romanick, 34, heard how he had sought help, including visits to a hospital emergency department, for his depression and delusions and abuse of illicit drugs like cocaine and crystal meth. On those occasions, however, the mentally ill man was seen and sent on his way.

But the ER doctor who saw Romanick three days before the events leading to his death, testified Tuesday the diagnosis may have been different had he been made aware of the man’s recent past.

Dr. Tony Meriano told the inquest he had no independent recollection of his time with Romanick on Sept. 12, 2017, after the man — suffering from what Windsor police officers described as a delusional belief that burglars were trying to break into his home — was encouraged to take an ambulance trip to hospital.

But the emergency department record and Meriano’s notes from that visit describe a “very cooperative” man who did not present as someone who was suicidal or homicidal.

Meriano told the inquest jury that, had he known at the time, he would have documented that Romanick had told an officer responding to one of his two 911 calls that day that he had a plan to use guitar string to kill himself.

“It may have challenged my impression,” said the doctor.

Three days later, Romanick was being sought for attempted murder after a shotgun attack on a man in Amherstburg that same day. Earlier in the inquest, tactical police officers who were dispatched to his home to arrest him testified they were not aware of his history of mental illness, including a visit to the emergency department in July.

“I would have sought additional information from the patient,” said Meriano, explaining how what was known by others could have helped in his emergency department assessment. Romanick’s widow testified last week that she had also informed crisis workers that her husband had a firearm.

The inquest before presiding officer Selwyn Pieters and a five-member jury will make recommendations aimed to help prevent similar types of incidents.

Much has changed to improve things over the past seven years, but Romanick’s widow last week testified that accessing mental-health supports locally remains difficult and can be too costly for many.

Meriano, who has been a Windsor Regional Hospital emergency department physician since 1999, described mental-health emergency visits as common and that no two cases are alike.

Prompted by inquest counsel, Meriano — while emphasizing it was his own opinion — said the mental illness situation locally has been worsening and that resources to deal with it are “lacking,” particularly psychiatric care.

Asked to explain, Meriano said local factors behind the worsening situation are shared by communities elsewhere — the pandemic and its aftermath; increased fentanyl, methamphetamine use and the opioid crisis.

Since Romanick’s death, communications and co-ordination between local agencies dealing with mental health have improved, other witnesses have testified at the inquest.