‘I want to know what happened to him — every damn detail’

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This article was published 09/12/2016 (3517 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bradley Errol Greene’s family will get a chance to find out what led to his death last May while he was in custody at the Winnipeg Remand Centre.

Dr. John K. Younes, Manitoba’s acting chief medical examiner, called an inquest into Greene’s death Friday. The date of the inquest will be determined by the provincial court’s chief judge.

The move comes after internal reviews of Greene’s death and four others this year alone — three men and a woman — at the jail, a sharp increase from previous years.

Hollie Hall, 38, died March 17; Robert McAdam, 53, died Sept. 6; Russell Spence, 31, died Oct. 12; and another man, not yet publicly identified, died Oct. 25.

Greene, 26, was a father of three children whose partner, Rochelle Pranteau, was pregnant with their fourth child.

Pranteau and Greene’s family have held three vigils and lobbied officials to release the details surrounding his death. They allege jail staff denied Greene his epilepsy medication.

Pranteau said inmates have told her paramedics pronounced Greene dead at the remand centre at about 3 p.m., but officials told her he died several hours later in hospital.

“So what is the story? Did he die at the hospital or did he die at the remand centre? It’s not matching up,” she said.

“I want to know what happened to him — every damn detail.”

Greene was taken into custody April 30 on a warrant for a breach of recognizance relating to alcohol consumption.

He had a seizure while on the phone in the jail on May 1. After the seizure, he was returned to his cell, where authorities maintain he was “under constant watch.”

About 45 minutes later, he had a second seizure in his cell.

Greene became unresponsive while being attended to by medical staff, who had already called for an ambulance.

He was taken to Health Sciences Centre, where he regained a pulse and was admitted to the intensive care unit but remained comatose until his death.

Pranteau told The Canadian Press Green was speaking with her when the first seizure began.

“He said he could feel the numbing feeling in his hands, and his jaw started locking and grinding, and then he could hardly talk,” she said.

“I heard him fall, and then the phone dropped and was just dangling there.”

Pranteau, 27, told media she listened helplessly for 20 minutes while guards and inmates responded.

She said it sounded like he was on his stomach and being held down.

“They were trying to tell Errol to calm down, but how could he calm down? He’s having his episode, let him have it,” she said.

An autopsy listed the immediate cause of death to be acute hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy — a brain injury caused by lack of oxygen.

The report listed a “sub-therapeutic” level of valproic acid — an anti-convulsant medication — as contributing to his death.

Corey Shefman, a human rights lawyer and board member of the Manitoba Association of Rights and Liberties, said only full inquests into each case — or a more expansive, system-wide public inquiry — will truly provide answers about what happened.

“Even when information is released to families, it’s released in a very heavily redacted form,” he said.

“Too often… the families are treated as an afterthought.”

— staff with files from The Canadian Press