The inquest into the death of a 43-year-old man who died while in care of a psychiatric unit at Royal Jubilee Hospital (RJH) in 2019 continued Sept. 13 with testimony from the hospital security officers who apprehended him for allegedly trying to leave the unit.
Paul Spencer was involuntarily admitted to Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) at RJH just past midnight on Sept. 27, 2019, after being apprehended by police due to concerns about his mental health.
Earlier in the week, the jury heard from the Saanich police officer and the psychiatric nurse who helped admit him to the unit. They described him at the time as "settled" and "calm in nature," saying he showed no signs of aggression.
Guiseppe Moonie-Tkachuk was the Island Health protection services officer who first responded to the incident. He said when Spencer got up to leave the unit, he was uncooperative with a nurse and the officer. That provoked the nurse to tell Moonie-Tkachuk to put Spencer in a seclusion room.
Moonie-Tkachuk told the court he had reason to believe the nurses were scared due to his body language, his eyes being "glazed" and his inability to follow direction from hospital staff.
"He was focused on not being in that department," Moonie-Tkachuk told the court on Sept. 12.
Video presented to the jury showed Moonie-Tkachuk struggling to restrain Spencer, which resulted in both of them falling to the ground, and Moonie-Tkachuk wrestling to apprehend Spencer.
The video showed three more protection services officers coming to aid Moonie-Tkachuk. One, Ross Walker, was seen giving Spencer a "knee strike", and punching him three times in the torso and upper-body while trying to get him prone to apply handcuffs.
Two of the officers who testified on Thursday, Sept. 12 (Walker and Mattaius Brueckl) said the strikes were appropriate uses of force.
"They were absolutely controlled strikes. That's called rabbit punches, which are short, accurate, low, reduced power strikes," Walker told the court.
Brueckl said he would do the same in a similar situation where he is dealing with a person he "can't control".
Richard Neary, counsel for Spencer's family, questioned the officers' incident reports, which showed inconsistencies.
Moonie-Tkachuk's report from the incident said Spencer was suicidal, which was not true; and noted he observed Spencer running towards the PES unit door and "hitting it", where in reality he admitted he was notified by a nurse that Spencer was trying to leave the unit.
The report written by Moonie-Tkachuk also noted that Walker delivered "palm-strikes" to Spencer, though the video shows Walker using a closed fist to punch Spencer. Neary questioned whether Moonie-Tkachuk lied in his report to try to justify his actions in applying force.
"You're trying to paint a picture that makes Mr. Spencer appear more dangerous and a greater risk than he was, because he ended up dead. That's a motive to exaggerate what you observed in your report," Neary told Moonie-Tkachuk, who denied the alligation.
After eventually putting Spencer in handcuffs, the video showed him being brought to the seclusion room, which had cameras for live stream only.
The officers described putting him face down on a mattress, taking off his shoes, pants and handcuffs, then restraining him with a blanket. Moonie-Tkachuk's report noted they wrapped him with a blanket "like a burrito", and the other two officers claimed they actually tied the blanket in a loose knot around his ankles, though due to the lack of footage in the room it's unclear who was right.
After leaving Spencer in the room, they returned eight minutes later to administer sedatives when Spencer was found dead, though it remains unclear what caused his death.
The inquest proceedings will go into next week where the jury will hear from other medical professionals and scientists. The jury will eventually make recommendations for systemic changes to prevent similar deaths in the future.
