Pubdate: Wed, 08 Oct 2008
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2008 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Suzanne Fournier

TRAGIC SEQUENCE OF EVENTS DESCRIBED IN WOMAN'S DEATH

Inquest Probes Drug-User's Final Hours

Candice Pete, a young aboriginal woman arrested for injecting drugs in
public, went into violent seizures in the Vancouver police jail on
Jan. 5, 2006, and died four days later in St. Paul's Hospital.

Yesterday, B.C. coroner Owen Court heard from a battery of police,
jail and medical witnesses about a tragic sequence of events that
began when two police officers watched Pete injecting drugs into her
foot in the 100-block Dunlevy Street about 9 a.m. that day.

Det. Const. Beth Crowther testified that Pete, "oblivious" to police
in a marked car, was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail.

Just before 7 p.m. that night, Crowther received a call on her
personal cellphone from a senior police officer.

"I was advised Miss Pete had suffered a seizure in jail and was in
hospital with a very bleak prognosis," said Crowther.

Pete never recovered consciousness.

Pete, 22, a member of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation, was the third
generation in her family to end up on Vancouver streets.

Although intensive-care physician Dr. Gregory Grant said Pete's family
saw her in hospital and agreed to terminate her life support, no one
from Pete's immediate family attended the inquest and her native band
was not advised.

It is mandatory that the B.C. Coroners Service hold an inquest for all
deaths in police custody.

At the jail, Pete was put in a small holding cell monitored by a video
camera, where she spent 10 minutes trying to throw up the drugs that
she had likely swallowed.

Retired police Sgt. Sherron Bayley, then the officer in charge of the
jail, testified that had the corrections officer in charge of
monitoring the banks of screens told her of Pete's behaviour, "I would
have pushed to have her taken to hospital at that point." Soon after,
Pete went into violent seizures, failed to respond to treatment by
jail nurses and was taken to hospital.

Pathologist Dr. Charles Lee testified that Pete's cause of death was
"multiple organ failure as a result of acute cocaine intoxication."
Toxicologist Dr. Walter Martz said the high post-mortem findings of
cocaine and its metabolite in Pete's blood indicate she might have
swallowed as much as a teabag full of cocaine.

The inquest will hear from its final witness this morning.
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