Windy Sinclair’s mom waits for answers as she prepares to bury daughter

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/01/2018 (2876 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Eleanor Sinclair says her demands for more information about the medical treatment her daughter received in the days before her frozen body was found on a Winnipeg street, are falling on deaf ears.

Despite assurances from Winnipeg Regional Health Authority officials that they’d meet Friday to speak about her daughter’s Dec. 25 trip to Seven Oaks General Hospital, Sinclair said she didn’t hear from them.

“They didn’t call me back today to set up a meeting… I want to see the records, the charts, and what was done to her, where she was in the hospital,” she said Friday.

Windy Gayle Sinclair, a 29-year-old mother of four, was found dead in an alley on the 300 block of Furby Street on Dec. 28, three days after going missing from Seven Oaks.

On Thursday, the Free Press reported she was two months pregnant at the time of her death.

While Eleanor Sinclair said the WRHA did not follow through on its promise to sit down with her Friday, she did receive one new piece of information: her daughter’s autopsy is finished.

She said around 4 p.m., a representative of the chief medical examiner’s office, contacted her to say the examination had been completed.

It means her body can be transferred to a funeral home and plans can be made for burial.

A determination of the cause of death isn’t expected until spring, a spokesman for the chief medical examiner’s office told the Free Press this week.

That the WRHA didn’t follow through on its planned meeting Friday, and a meeting Thursday left her with more questions than answers and has made her increasingly angry, Sinclairsaid.

Since her daughter’s departure from the hospital Dec. 25, Sinclair said she gets more information from reporters than the police or hospital officials.

“They just looked at each other and said, ‘Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out. We can’t really comment on that. We don’t have her chart in front of us. We don’t know who the staff was when you called,’” Sinclair said of her meeting Thursday with WRHA representatives.

“Well, why did they set up a meeting when they weren’t prepared? Why didn’t they have the chart with them when we started? Wasn’t that the point of the meeting?”

One of her main questions: was a code yellow called after hospital staff realized her daughter was missing?

A code yellow prompts an expanded search when a patient leaves without notifying staff and completing treatment.

Sinclair said she also wants answers as to why her daughter — who she said was high on methamphetamine before arriving at the hospital — wasn’t held under the Mental Health Act or the Intoxicated Persons Detention Act.

When asked Friday if a code yellow was called for Windy Sinclair, Réal Cloutier, interim president and chief executive officer of the WRHA, said the matter was being investigated.

“We’re doing a deep review. We’re at the point now where we have disclosed some information to the family,” Cloutier said.

“In respect to the family, we have to complete our review and share the information with them first.”

He gave no indication when the WRHA’s internal review is expected to be done.

Sinclair said she hopes her daughter’s tragic death will lead to positive change in terms of how the medical system treats Indigenous people struggling with addiction.

For the time being, Sinclair said she is thankful she’ll be able to lay her daughter to rest.

“We need to pay our final respects to my daughter. I want to give her a final resting place,” she said.

“It doesn’t feel right it’s taken so long. We’ll also be paying respect to my unborn grandchild.”

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @rk_thorpe