Prison suicide not preventable, inquest rules

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This article was published 28/01/2025 (221 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The 2019 suicide death of a sex offender in protective custody at Stony Mountain prison was not preventable, a judge has found, noting a transfer to solitary confinement would have amounted “to trading one living hell for another.”

Timothy Frederick Koltusky, 34, was serving a two-year-and-11-month sentence in the federal prison north of Winnipeg for breaching a long-term supervision order when a corrections officer found him hanging by a ligature made from garbage bags in his cell just before 1 a.m. on March 12, 2019.

Staff tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at 1:25 a.m.

Koltusky’s death sparked a provincial court inquest, as is legislatively required when a person dies in police or correctional custody in Manitoba.

The inquest was held in front of senior provincial court Judge Donald Slough in July.

Provincial court judges have no jurisdiction over federal institutions. They have no authority to make formal recommendations for changes to prison policies and procedures that would prevent similar deaths in the future, as is typical of inquests. They can make observations about deficiencies in the system’s operation.

Slough said he agreed with the Correctional Service of Canada’s review, which found no procedural errors in the lead-up to Koltusky’s death.

“The evidence establishes that everyone who dealt with Timothy Koltusky over the last months and days of his life found him to be forward thinking, engaged in institutional programming and work, moving forward with his life,” Slough wrote in a report on the inquest released Tuesday.

“Based on the evidence presented at this inquest, I find that Timothy Koltusky’s death, while tragic, was not preventable.”

Despite a history of self-harm and diagnosed mental disorders — in addition to being being bullied within the institution because he was a sex offender — Koltusky displayed no warning signs he was suicidal, Slough found.

Prison officials would have considered his history of self-harm in determining his placement in the prison. He was held in protective custody, which included ex-gang members and sex offenders. Koltusky was a “known high-profile sexual offender. As such, he would be a target for violence and bullying,” Slough said.

The only unit at the prison that was more restrictive at the time was the segregation unit, which saw inmates placed in essential solitary confinement for extended periods.

The federal government banned the use of solitary confinement in prisons later in 2019. Today, isolated inmates are placed in structured intervention units and must be granted four hours a day outside their cells, including two hours of “meaningful human contact.”

The report noted Koltusky told a psychologist about two months before he took his own life that he was anxious over threats and violence from others in the protective custody unit. He told the psychologist “certain individuals make my life a living hell.”

The inquest heard that such a disclosure would not trigger a transfer to another unit, unless Koltusky requested it, which he did not. The only other unit for him would have been solitary.

“There is no way of knowing what was going on in Timothy Koltusky’s mind, but I would note that at that time a transfer to another unit within Stony Mountain Institution would have meant transfer to the administrative segregation unit,” Slough said.

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“Given the conditions in that unit… that transfer would amount to trading one living hell for another.”

Slough noted there was no evidence of further bullying in the months before his death, so it’s difficult to determine what role the issue played in his suicide.

Koltusky, who was born Kevin Scott Steppan and later changed his name, committed violent sex assaults on two sex-trade workers in Winnipeg’s downtown in August 2005.

He was convicted five years later and given an eight-year sentence and a 10-year long-term offender order. Most of Koltusky’s eight years consisted of time served. He repeatedly breached the long-term order, which would see him sent back to various prisons frequently during the 2010s, including his final stint.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Erik Pindera
Reporter

Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020.  Read more about Erik.

Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.