Sick baby’s dad steals nurse’s car Man jailed after HSC worker caring for child has keys, credit card stolen By: Dean Pritchard Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Apr. 24, 2023

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This article was published 24/04/2023 (868 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg nurse who has spent more than two decades tending to “the sickest of the sick” says she will never feel safe at work again after the parents of a baby she was caring for stole her car and used her credit cards to go on an $1,800 spending spree.

“I do what I do so that innocent babies get to eventually go home to a grateful and loving family,” the Health Sciences Centre neonatal nurse wrote in a victim impact statement read out in court Monday by her husband.

“Their joy is my joy, their tears are my tears,” the woman wrote. “The worst part is that I was not victimized by a random street thug who broke into the hospital nursery. I was victimized by the very people that we were caring for…. They exploited their sick baby to target the very nurses who were giving everything of ourselves to help their baby recover and go home.”

“The worst part is that I was not victimized by a random street thug who broke into the hospital nursery. I was victimized by the very people that we were caring for.”–HSC nurse

Adam McKay, 40, pleaded guilty to theft of a motor vehicle, theft, fraudulent use of a credit card and other offences for the July 27, 2022, incident and a handful of unrelated charges and was sentenced to just under 19 months in jail.

“Leaving your ill, newborn child who is in the intensive-care unit to go and steal from the person who is tasked with caring for his needs is reprehensible behaviour,” said provincial court Judge Alain Huberdeau. The nurse “was victimized by Mr. McKay simply because of what she loved to do, namely provide the best possible care she could to the most vulnerable people in our society.”

Court heard McKay and co-accused Lacey Sinclair were visiting their sick child in the newborn intensive-care unit at about 7 a.m. when McKay walked into a staff-only area and stole the nurse’s backpack, containing her wallet and car keys.

“They surveilled me and as soon as I was out of sight caring for a baby, they invaded the nursing station and stole my bag,” the nurse wrote.

The couple went to the hospital parkade, where they used the nurse’s vehicle key fob to identify her Ford Explorer. Within minutes they drove to a McPhillips Street Walmart where they used the victim’s credit card to rack up hundreds of dollars in purchases, then did the same thing at a Leila Avenue Home Depot and a Domo gas bar before driving 200 kilometres to Fisher River Cree Nation.

“They essentially went on a spree with (the victim’s) credit card,” said Crown attorney Sheila Doe.

The couple returned to Winnipeg that same night and were arrested after police spotted the stolen vehicle shortly before midnight and boxed it in near the intersection of James Avenue and Princess Street.

The nurse, a casual employee at the hospital, said she was “emotionally and physically” unable to work for more than two weeks after the incident and that she and her husband had to sell their vehicle at a $10,000 loss.

“When we got the vehicle back it was full of needles and stolen property,” the woman said. “The thought of even sitting in it made me physically ill. No matter what remediation was done, I couldn’t help but imagine sitting on a hidden needle.”

According to a pre-sentence report prepared for court, McKay told a probation officer that he stole the victim’s backpack after seeing a nurse shaking a baby. McKay claimed he confronted staff who denied the allegation.

“He said he then took it upon himself to find that staff member’s keys and take her vehicle,” Doe said, calling McKay’s claim ridiculous and “morally offensive.”

“That is absolutely false,” Doe said. “No one shook a baby. There was no accusation like that brought to the hospital… What it really amounts to is an attempt at victim-blaming and an attempt to minimize his own moral culpability.”

“When we got the vehicle back it was full of needles and stolen property… The thought of even sitting in it made me physically ill. No matter what remediation was done, I couldn’t help but imagine sitting on a hidden needle.”–HSC nurse

Defence lawyer David Barbour said his client was “open to being wrong” about the shaking allegation and said it was the result of a “miscommunication.”

McKay has a prior criminal record, including convictions for assault, but had stayed out of trouble with the law for eight years prior to 2020, court was told. A pre-sentence report indicated McKay said he descended into alcohol and drug abuse after several of the children he shared with Sinclair were seized by Child and Family Services.

“Sobriety and addictions treatment are what protects society from Mr. McKay,” Barbour said. “Mr. McKay is someone who can exist in society, can obey the rules and follow the law.”

Sinclair has not entered any pleas in connection to the incident and remains before the court. She is presumed innocent.

A Winnipeg Regional Health Authority spokesman said the agency does not currently track reported crimes at its facilities at a regional level, so he was unable to provide any statistics Monday.

According to the Manitoba Nurses Union, the total amount of time city police have spent at Health Sciences Centre responding to reports of crime nearly doubled between 2012 and 2021.

The president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, Darlene Jackson, pointed to a recent survey by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Union that found nine in 10 nurses experienced some kind of abuse last year, while more than six in 10 experienced physical abuse.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

— With files from Erik Pindera and Katie May

Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter

Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.

Every piece of reporting Dean 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.