Wife heard Remand Centre inmate struggle to take final breaths over phone, inquest told

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For 10 long minutes, as Bradley Errol Greene lay on the floor of the Winnipeg Remand Centre having a seizure before he died, his common-law wife helplessly heard him gasping for breath on a phone.

On Monday, the lawyer representing Greene’s family at an inquest looking into the circumstances into the 26-year-old man’s death said he expects it to also delve into issues of “systemic racism,” as well as the role of correctional officers in keeping inmates safe.

Rochelle Pranteau, wearing a red hoodie emblazoned with a photograph of Greene and her together with the words “Justice for Errol” on the front, told provincial court Judge Heather Pullan that Greene phoned her May 1, 2016, just before the seizure began.

Greene, 26, had lived with epilepsy he managed with medication.

Pranteau said her common-law husband of 11 years and father to their four children (one of whom was born after he died and who she named Errol) had been asking Remand Centre staff for anti-seizure medication for the two days since he was arrested by police for “smelling of alcohol.”

“He started telling me he was getting the numbing feeling in his fingers and that was some of the signs of a seizure,” Pranteau told the judge presiding over the inquest. “I was trying to tell him to get up and tell a guard so they would be ready… he didn’t have a chance.

“By the time he got up, he fell. He collapsed… I heard him hit the floor. I heard a thud as the phone hit the floor.”

Under questioning by Crown attorney Keith Eyrickson, Pranteau said she could hear inmates rushing to Greene’s aid. At least five minutes went by before she heard correctional staff, followed by a nurse, arrive, she said.

“I could hear him jerking,” she said. “I could hear him screaming and disoriented.

“You could hear him struggling for breath. I could hear him gasping for air.”

Pranteau said she was “screaming on the phone. Cursing. I was hoping someone would answer the phone, but nobody did.”

Ten minutes after Greene’s seizure started, someone hung up the phone without saying anything, she said.

It wasn’t until eight hours later someone from the Remand Centre called to tell her Greene had died.

Outside court, Pranteau’s lawyer, Corey Shefman, praised the woman’s testimony, saying she was “a stronger person than I am. She did it with strength and clarity. She has gone through a traumatic experience. She presented a very clear picture for this judge.”

Noting five inmates died in custody around the time of Greene’s death, Shefman said the family wants the inquest to look into ways of preventing such deaths.

“We want to prevent other families from going through this in future… They rely on the government to take care of them and they failed in the worst way possible.”

Shefman also wants the inquest to look into “systemic racism” because Greene was an Indigenous man and more than 70 per cent of the inmate population in the Winnipeg Remand Centre is Indigenous. “And 60 per cent of them haven’t not been convicted of a crime,” he said.

During testimony, Pranteau said Greene was supposed to take five anti-seizure pills a day, spread over morning, noon, and evening, but the day he was detained he only took two pills in the morning.

“He left in a hurry,” she said, noting he was planning to meet with a friend and his mother before meeting her in the downtown that Friday evening.

Pranteau said Greene failed to show up and the next time she heard from him, he was phoning from the Remand Centre on Saturday morning.

Dr. Raymond Rivera, a pathologist, testified he concluded Greene died from a cardio-respiratory failure, secondary to an epileptic seizure.

Rivera said Greene had his first seizure Sunday, May 1, at 1:53 p.m., and a second one less than an hour later at 2:37 p.m. He said correctional officers handcuffed the man and took him into a cell to calm down.

The doctor said it was when paramedics were assessing Greene, before taking him to hospital, that the man’s breathing and heart stopped.

Rivera said it might have been a sign Greene had suffered a third seizure, but there is no way of knowing for sure.

Paramedics were able to start Greene’s heart again, but he was later pronounced dead at the Health Sciences Centre at 8:27 p.m.

Rivera said he noted several cuts and bruises on Greene’s body, including an almost half-centimetre tearing of the tongue caused by the man’s own teeth, but they were all likely the result of thrashing around during his seizures.

Rivera said a blood sample taken while Greene was alive found only about 6.9 micrograms per millilitre of anti-seizure medication in his system, instead of the 50 to 100 mg/ml there should have been.

The inquest continues.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca