Enraged inmate declared ‘this was war’: court testimony

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This article was published 05/09/2023 (779 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Headingley Correctional Centre inmate who died after a violent takedown by corrections officers told a crisis negotiator “I’m not going to go peacefully” and was prepared to die, a trial heard Tuesday.

“He looked at us in a state of rage, his eyes were bulging and his veins were popping,” Headingley jail senior unit officer and crisis negotiator Michel Jolicoeur testified in a Winnipeg court room.

“I’ve been involved in over 60 incidents and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

William Ahmo, 45, died Feb. 14, 2021, seven days after he was injured in a violent clash with officers at the jail.

Corrections officer Robert Jeffrey Morden, 44, is on trial charged with criminal negligence causing death and failing to provide necessities of life.

Court has heard Ahmo became enraged after being told a racist joke.

On Sept. 1, court heard Ahmo said it was a corrections officer who told him the joke. On Tuesday, Jolicoeur testified it was another inmate.

Video played for court Sept. 1, showed Ahmo pacing the common area of his unit at 12:30 p.m., before ripping a water tank fixture from the wall and throwing it and other items at a reinforced window separating a secured staff area from the inmate unit.

Corrections staff and several inmates quickly dispersed.

During an ensuing three-hour-long standoff, 30 inmates in the unit remained locked in their cells as Ahmo yelled threats at staff, continued to ram heavy items at the window, causing it to crack, tore a television from its ceiling mount and broke a mop into two pieces, swinging the jagged sticks as he walked.

Ahmo collected glass shards from the broken television and left them on a second-floor walkway outside several cell doors.

“Would you agree he seemed motivated to hurt you?” defence lawyer Richard Wolson asked Jolicoeur during cross examination Tuesday.

“Absolutely,” Jolicoeur replied.

On a jail video played for court Sept. 1, Jolicoeur could be heard negotiating with Ahmo, but Ahmo’s replies were inaudible.

On Tuesday, Jolicoeur testified Ahmo said he would kill anyone who walked through the door, and claimed to have cut a person’s hand off in the past.

The jail staff member testified Ahmo said, “This was war,” that he wasn’t afraid to die and “I’m not going to go peacefully.”

When Jolicoeur asked Ahmo how he saw the standoff ending, the inmate said with corrections officers killing him.

Wolson raised the question of drugs in the jail, suggesting Ahmo was under the influence of methamphetamine.

Jolicoeur said in the past five years there has been an increase in the incidence of meth psychosis among inmates at the Headingley jail.

The corrections officer said Ahmo appeared delusional and talked of communicating with God.

Jolicoeur continued to negotiate with Ahmo, without success, until shortly after 3 p.m., when members of the corrections emergency response unit, led by Morden, fired three pepper balls (non-lethal projectiles containing chemical irritant) at Ahmo, and Jolicoeur was told to step aside.

A half-hour later, Morden and six or seven other response officers stormed the unit and fired several chemical projectiles at Ahmo as he stood on a second-floor walkway. Ahmo, brandishing a broken mop handle, advanced on the officers, who forcefully took him to the floor.

Ahmo screamed and flailed as a half-dozen officers piled on top of him, forcing the inmate’s face and neck to the floor.

Restrained and seemingly helpless, he told officers more than 20 times: “I can’t breathe.”

Ahmo, unmoving and appearing unresponsive, was placed in a restraint chair, with one officer violently jerking his head backward, the video shows.

Ahmo was found with no pulse and a “code red” was issued.

Paramedic John Kirouac testified Tuesday he and his partner were dispatched to the jail following a report “of someone possibly doing self-harm.”

Kirouac said they were directed to a staging area and waited for several minutes before a corrections officer escorted them to a room where they found Ahmo lying on the floor surrounded by a dozen people and hooked up to a defibrillator.

“At that point, there was no pulse, so we started doing CPR,” Kirouac said.

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A video played for court Tuesday showed Kirouac and his partner stepping aside to retrieve some medical equipment as two corrections officers took turns administering chest compressions.

“C’mon William, c’mon William, attaboy William,” someone on the video can be heard saying minutes later when a pulse was detected.

Morden, seated with his wife behind his lawyer, did not look at the video for much of its 30-minute running time, and wiped tears from his eyes with a tissue.

Kirouac said Ahmo never regained consciousness during the transport to Grace Hospital in Winnipeg.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

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.