Sinclair’s family reviews inquest report into waiting-room death

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/12/2014 (4315 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than six years after Brian Sinclair died in the emergency waiting room at the Health Sciences Centre, his family is reading an inquest report about his death.

Vilko Zbogar, one of the family’s lawyers, said the report, written by provincial court Judge Tim Preston, was received by them the day before it is being released to the public on Friday.

But Zbogar said all he could say today was “we have the report and that we are reviewing it.

“The court has explicitly directed that the report must remain confidential to the parties until its public release. Neither we nor (our) clients are at liberty to speak about its contents.”

Sinclair died in the waiting room on Sept. 21, 2008, after arriving there 34 hours earlier because a blocked urinary catheter tube needed changing.

An autopsy determined that by the time Sinclair was discovered and rushed into the emergency department’s treatment area rigor mortis was setting in and he may have been dead as long as seven hours.

The inquest was told Sinclair died of a treatable bladder infection.

The inquest, which began last year, heard from 82 witnesses and stretched over 10 months until last June.

Zbogar, on the final day of the inquest, told the judge he wanted him to determine in the inquest report that Sinclair’s death was a homicide and the family was again requesting the provincial government call a public inquiry into his death.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca