Possible crime, definite punishment

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/08/2017 (3123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mark Witt carefully navigates the poorly lit stairwell of his Magnus Avenue rooming house, swaying from side to side with each dangerous step he takes.

“It’s like trying to walk while on a roller-coaster,” Witt, 57, explains as he lunges for the handrail to help steady himself. “I’m constantly seeing double. Sometimes, the double doubles up to quadruple.”

Inside his pocket is a hospital bandage bearing his name. He carries it on him at all times to make it easier for anyone who finds him if he collapses on a sidewalk or street during one of the long daily walks he takes to keep himself occupied.

“They’ll be able to go through my pockets and know who I am,” he says.

Witt might not need any introduction to the paramedics who come to pick him up. He’s met the same woman on three occasions in recent months and jokes he’s on a “first-name basis” with many of them.

Witt makes it to the top of the stairs without tumbling over and then shuffles his way into his tiny, one-room suite. It is sweltering inside, the result of direct sunlight and hot, humid air coming in through a tiny open window.

A dozen cans of pasta sit on the table, the only food that is visible. Witt figures that will last him a few weeks. He doesn’t have much of an appetite and says he’s lost at least 20 pounds over the past couple of months; he weighs just 134 pounds.

His only family, two adult daughters, live in Quebec and are estranged. His one close friend died more than a year ago. He considered getting a cat, but jokes that he’s not ready for a “20-year commitment.” In reality, he’s just trying to survive each day.

“At times I sit back and wonder if I’m still on life-support and this is all a dream,” he says. “I can’t believe this has happened to my life.”

Satoshi Yamashita of the Manitoba Brain Injury Association says Witt’s case underscores a troubling reality his organization sees too often.

“Right now I don’t think he’s able to live independently. There’s often no support for the brain injury after they get out of the hospital. They will try to go back to the way things used to be, but they can’t. That’s the tough part. Especially if there’s no family or friends to tell them, they’re just going to become isolated from society,” Yamashita says.

“If you have mental-health issues there’s going to be lots of supports. But if it’s a brain injury there’s very limited support.”

Last summer, Witt was a hard-working contributing member of society, doing heavy-gauge steel framing on several big local projects. He was making more than $32 an hour and loving his life.

This summer, Witt is resigned to his fate: that of a broken man who suffers regular seizures — at least seven in the past couple of months — and is now struggling to live while on permanent disability that gives him about $300 a month after rent, or about $10 a day.

“I’m concerned about him,” admits Pastor Peter Swenson of the Bethlehem Aboriginal Fellowship Church who, along with wife Jo-Anne, have been paying regular visits to Witt since he was discharged from hospital and resumed living independently a couple of months ago.

“He’s way more vulnerable today than he used to be.”

The only regular human interaction Witt has, aside from the Swensons, is with health workers at the Health Sciences Centre and Misericordia Health Centre, where he walks for regular appointments to follow up on the devastating injury that turned his life upside-down.

How did he get hurt?

The answer, it seems, is anything but clear.

Witt was found one night last October bleeding heavily beside a garbage dumpster behind the Northern Hotel on Main Street. His injuries were extensive and life-threatening and required surgery to address swelling and bleeding on the brain, along with a fractured eye socket and jaw. Witt spent about seven months at HSC — initially in the hospital, and then at the adjacent Lennox Bell Lodge while he recovered.

Witt has little memory of the night beyond visiting a cheque-cashing service with his paycheque just after 5 p.m. He recalls leaving with nearly $1,500 in his pocket and then heading to the Northern to buy a beverage. The money was gone when paramedics were called by a passerby who found him just after midnight.

Witt believes he was jumped from behind and hit with an object such as a brick or rock, then robbed and left for dead before he was found several hours later. But the call was entered into the 911 system as a “medic” because the person who found Witt thought he may have just been intoxicated, fell and injured himself.

And that’s where this sad story takes a bizarre twist. Because of how it originally came in, nearly two months passed before police would interview Witt in hospital. By then, any surveillance video from cameras in the area had been recorded over. And with no direct witnesses to what happened, and Witt having no independent recollection, the investigation ground to a halt before it ever started.

“We really have nothing to go on. He feels he was assaulted, but we have no proof of that. Not to say it didn’t happen. It very well could have happened, but we just have nothing that leads us down any kind of investigative path,” Const. Jay Murray says.

The incident is still listed in the police computer system as a “medic,” he says. The report also says Witt was “combative and unco-operative” with paramedics at the scene — something he denies.

“I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Witt says.

As a result, he hasn’t received any compensation for being a victim of a crime because he isn’t officially listed as one. His requests for money to replace things such as his broken dentures and eyeglasses, along with bus fare to get to his medical appointments, have been denied.

Murray said Witt may be an example of a person “falling through the cracks a little bit.”

“He did suffer an injury, absolutely,” he said. “From our point of view, I think we did everything we could have. There’s certain issues with investigating something two months after the fact. Unfortunately this is one of those things I don’t know if we’ll ever truly know what happened to cause those injuries.

Witt also came out of hospital to discover the landlord where he’d previously lived had moved all his stuff out — either selling it or giving it away — and found a new tenant. And his stay at Lennox Bell was tumultuous, to say the least.

Witt admits he was far from an ideal resident and had run-ins with staff, something he blames on the head trauma he suffered. Police were called to deal with him on several occasions, although he was never charged.

Murray acknowledges the incidents “may have been a mechanism of the brain injury.”

Witt recalls once day where he started telling facility staff people were coming to rob them of cocaine and that their lives were in danger. He was delusional.

“I don’t know what the hell happened. I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he says. “After that it was like, ‘OK, you have to go. The staff are afraid of you.’”

Witt was warned about his behaviour and eventually told to leave at the end of May. Staff at the facility set him up at the Salvation Army, where he remained for about a week until he got help finding his current suite on Magnus. He was also put in touch with the Easy Street brain injury program at Misericordia, which he now attends.

Yamashita said someone with Witt’s challenges should be in a long-term treatment facility, likely for a year or two. The ongoing medical issues and erratic behaviour described by Witt, police and medical officials is consistent with someone who has suffered violent, traumatic brain injury, he says.

A spokeswoman for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority says they can’t comment specifically on Witt’s case, but urge him to reach out if he has concerns about his experience and treatment.

“It can be great support for people who have concerns about their care or the way in which care was provided,” she says.

Swenson and his wife are now going out of their way to help, knowing they are Witt’s only community support. They’ve taken him grocery shopping on a couple of occasions and purchased bedding, cutlery and dishes for him when he moved in.

“When they turned him loose from the hospital he didn’t have anything,” Swenson says.

Unlike police and paramedics, they have no doubt that Witt is a crime victim.

“He got beat up pretty good,” says Swenson, who has known Witt for almost 16 years and has been a witness to the devastating changes caused by the brain injury.

He’s optimistic Witt can survive on his own now, despite the many challenges he faces.

“He’s lived by himself for years,” Swenson says. “He’s not incapacitated and he’s not dumb; he’s an intelligent person.”

Witt admits he should probably be using a walker to get around, but avoids it because “doing so, you may as well put a target” on you. He doesn’t carry cash, but that’s not a problem, given his current financial situation and inability to return to work.

He’s now on a daily medication regime to deal with his seizures.

“The doctor told me the other day it’s irreversible,” Witt says, adding he isn’t worrying about the future much these days.

“We’ll figure it out. I hate to put it this way and pardon my french, but shit happens,” he says with a cackle.

“I don’t know what I did in my past life, but man, I’m being tested in this one.”

 

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikeoncrime