The B.C. Coroners Service will hold a public inquest into the death of a 43-year-old man who was found unconscious in the back of a Vancouver Police Department wagon and later died in Vancouver General Hospital.
Gregory Lloyd died Feb. 13, 2014, five days after police arrested him for breaching court-ordered conditions not to consume alcohol or be in a one-block radius of an apartment in the 2100-block Triumph Street.
An Independent Investigations Office report released in May said Lloyd, who had a blood alcohol level of 0.18 per cent, hanged himself in the wagon and his death was a result of the injuries. The wagon was parked inside the entrance to the Vancouver jail on Cordova Street.
Coroner Dr. Kelly Barnard and a jury will hear evidence from witnesses under oath to determine the facts surrounding Lloyd’s death. The jury will have the opportunity to make recommendations aimed at preventing deaths under similar circumstances.
The inquest is scheduled to begin Feb. 10, 2015.
The investigations office report revealed that a nurse who attended to Lloyd at the jail recognized him from a similar incident in January where he had tied a string around his neck and was taken to hospital.
The report said the incident in January “foreshadowed” Lloyd’s death in February but investigations office Chief Civilian Director Richard Rosenthal ruled that police were not negligent in the death.
“Any determination as to whether the officers who arrested [Lloyd] in January should have identified him as a suicide risk falls outside the realm of criminal negligence as there is no reason to believe that those officers failed to take such an action out of a wanton or reckless disregard for his life or safety,” wrote Rosenthal, who noted Lloyd was not classified in police records as suicidal.
But Rosenthal pointed out it wasn’t the mandate of the investigations office to examine “any omissions that may have taken place with respect to the failure to document the affected person as a suicide risk based on his conduct at the time of his earlier arrest [in January].”
Rosenthal noted the officers put Lloyd in handcuffs, with his hands behind his back. When police discovered Lloyd unresponsive in the wagon, his hands were still in handcuffs but in front of his body — something Lloyd also managed to do when arrested in January.
The report said Lloyd was cooperative with officers when arrested. A former roommate had called police to have Lloyd removed from his apartment. The roommate knew Lloyd, whom he described as agitated, had breached his court-ordered conditions.
Police transported Lloyd to the jail with another prisoner, whom they unloaded first. An officer returned to the wagon to find Lloyd with a shoelace around his neck and tied to the wire mesh covering the inside of a door.
The officer called out to two nearby correctional officers for help. A nurse also assisted before paramedics arrived and transported Lloyd to hospital. He was subsequently diagnosed with “an anoxic brain injury” and died at 11:34 a.m. on Feb. 13.
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