Murray Wood: Who's hot and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look at the week's news and decides who's hot and who's not. Today's list includes tho...
Saskatchewan’s Serious Incident Response Team has ended its investigation into the death of a Swift Current woman, saying there were “no grounds to believe an offence was committed by any police officer.”
The team is a civilian-led organization that investigates cases where a person is seriously injured or dies while in police custody or as a result of a police officer’s actions.
Read More:
- SIRT investigates woman’s death after wellness check by Swift Current RCMP
- SIRT investigating after Mountie hits 16-year-old pedestrian with vehicle
- RCMP investigating after wanted man goes into ‘medical distress’ during arrest
Officers from the Swift Current RCMP detachment were called to a hotel on South Service Road at around 11 a.m. on May 5, 2024 to perform a wellness check at the request of the 55-year-old woman’s family, who said she “might have been in the midst of a breakdown, with a history of substance abuse and previous talk of self-harm.”
“Officers responded immediately and located an adult female, whom they determined required medical care. She was taken into custody under the Mental Health Act,” the RCMP said in a statement.
“EMS was engaged to transport her to the hospital for medical care. On the way to the hospital, the female went into medical distress. She was later pronounced deceased at the hospital.”
A report released on May 2nd by the Serious Incident Response Team sheds more light on the manner of the woman’s death. The report did not name the woman, instead referring to her only as “the affected person.”
In the report, investigators determined that the woman had agreed to go to the hospital after meeting with an RCMP officer at the hotel, but was arrested after she allegedly “swatted at” the officer when he tried to stop her from lighting a cigarette.
According to the report, police did not use force during the woman’s arrest, despite the fact she allegedly “kicked backwards,” striking an officer in the shin as she was being taken to an ambulance in handcuffs.
The report said she “went limp and went into medical distress” while the ambulance was taking her to a local hospital, after she complained that the handcuffs were too tight.
She was declared dead at the Cypress Regional Hospital at 12:26 p.m., about half an hour after the ambulance arrived at the facility.
“While the autopsy examination concluded the cause of the affected person’s death was cardiorespiratory arrest… one of a number of contributing factors was noted to be the stress, both psychological and physiological, brought on by the affected person’s detention by police,” the report explained.
“In light of this finding, it is worth noting that any arrest, even one conducted without any use of force by police, may be stressful or the subject of the arrest by its very nature.”
The team noted that a number of factors likely played a role in the woman’s death.
“While the stress of being arrested, along with numerous chronic and acute medical issues, may have played some role in the timing of the onset of the affected person’s medical distress… that arrest was both based on reasonable grounds, and was reasonably conducted,” the report read.
