Teen ‘screaming for help’ before death in custody
‘He was acting very strangely’
A TEENAGER was ‘screaming for support’ with mental health problems in the runup to his death in custody, a court heard yesterday.
Liam Kerr, 19, died in hospital less than a week after attempting suicide in Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution, Stirlingshire.
Kerr, of Paisley, was on remand over a robbery at a sandwich shop in the Renfrewshire town.
A Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) at Falkirk Sheriff Court heard Kerr, said to have ‘complex’ mental health needs, had been in Polmont for nearly eight weeks before the incident in 2017.
On the evening of Friday, January 13, he tried to take his own life only hours after being seen by an NHS psychiatrist, who had ruled out a transfer to a psychiatric ward. He died six days later.
Kerr’s brother Sean, 28, said: ‘Liam wasn’t himself. There were reports he was screaming for support. I’m struggling to understand why there was no referral to the suicide prevention team.’
Psychiatric nurse Brian Leech told the inquiry he had been on duty the weekend before the incident. He was called to the segregation unit where Kerr – diagnosed on a previous admission as suffering from drug-induced psychosis – was being held due to his ‘behaviour’.
Mr Leech told the FAI he had received a call from staff at the unit saying Kerr was acting ‘very strangely’. He said when he arrived he saw him in the exercise yard.
Mr Leech said: ‘He was shouting – not making any real sense as far as I could see – and pacing about the yard.’ He said he talked to him and he ‘settled himself down’ and went back to his cell. The next day he saw him again and found him ‘shouting and screaming’ and pacing round his cell.
Mr Leech said Kerr was ‘difficult to reason with’ and had been placed on medication to help him sleep. He arranged for him to be seen by a nurse the next day.
He said: ‘I was thinking, if he gets a good night’s sleep on the Sunday night, maybe he’d be different on the Monday. But apparently he wasn’t.’
Mr Leech said he had not activated the Scottish Prison Service’s suicide prevention protocol as Kerr was not presenting with any signs that he was at risk of self-harm or suicide.
On the Friday, Kerr was visited by NHS Forth Valley consultant psychiatrist Dr Rosa Serrano – who prescribed anti-psychotic medication but did not deem a hospital admission necessary.
Mr Leech said: ‘Liam was totally different from when I saw him at the weekend. He seemed a lot worse. He wasn’t making any sense and you couldn’t bring him back to talk to him rationally.’
Brian Ward, an officer at Polmont for 21 years, told the inquiry: ‘He was shouting all the time, saying there were other people in his cell with him when there weren’t, screeching and shouting all night. His shouting was incoherent. It was 24 hours a day that Liam was behaving that way.
‘He was seen by a psychiatrist and a psychologist and the feedback we were given was that it was behavioural, not psychotic. We didn’t agree with that.
‘Myself and my colleagues were totally disheartened with the feedback we got for him. We were trying to deal with a person, care for them, and all our experience went for nothing.’
The inquiry continues.