What happened to Errol Greene? Autopsy results reveal
new info on inmate death
Errol
Greene was cuffed, shackled and restrained on his stomach during epileptic
seizure
As a former political Prisoner in the Guantanamo’s Canadian
prisons, my personal experience over the months of my captivity is as follows:
The violence and danger to be assassinated by the prison guards is a way of
every single day survival. The truth is that: the prisoners are being abused,
tortured, and killed by those guards of the prisons across the country. The
prisoners they are not in a position to denounce anyone, not to the judges in
the courtrooms for fear of being beaten or killed. Remind that Erroll Greene it
is not the first prisoner of being killed by the guards, also many names exist
in the prisons lists. As Ashley Smith who was exposed for years to the
murderous, abusive, sadistic torture, and behaviors of the prison guards. The
Ministry of Correctional Services, during years has demonstrated such a
terrible abuse of power.
Errol Greene
holds two of his four children. His son, Errol Junior, was born five months
after Greene's death. (Courtesy of Rochelle Pranteau)
759 shares
Eyewitness
accounts of the death of Errol Greene are now confirmed by an autopsy report.
CBC News obtained
a copy of the detailed report, dated Oct. 13, last week. It points to
concerns around how the 26-year-old's epileptic seizure was handled by
corrections officers, and proves he was not administered his
seizure-controlling medication while in custody at the Winnipeg Remand Centre.
Greene's wife,
Rochelle Pranteau, is still sifting through the pages of medical jargon
trying to make sense of it all.
"I can't
imagine what he went through, and I don't know what to tell our kids,"
said Pranteau, who just gave birth to her and Errol's fourth child, Errol
Junior.
Concern over the
circumstances of Greene's death emerged early on from those who witnessed the
medical emergency in person and over the phone. They questioned the emergency
response to Greene's seizure and the possibility that the Winnipeg Remand
Centre denied access to valproic acid, the seizure-controlling medication for
which Greene was prescribed.
Pranteau was
speaking with Greene over the phone when he suffered the first of two seizures
that eventually led to his death. At the time, Greene told Pranteau that he
repeatedly asked for his medication but was ignored.
In the autopsy
report, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner states that Greene had
the first of two seizures at 1:52 p.m. on May 1. At that point he was
handcuffed, shackled and held face down before being taken to his cell.
A second seizure
occurred about 45 minutes later inside Greene's cell, at which point an
ambulance was called. It took another 15 minutes for the ambulance to arrive,
at which point paramedics attempted to resuscitate Greene.
According to
several witnesses, Greene was unresponsive.
"I heard
audibly that the paramedics called his time of death at 15:05 on Sunday
afternoon and that's the only time stamp I heard," said Stephen King,
Greene's cell-mate.
Once at the
Health Sciences Centre Emergency Department, Greene was given several rounds of
epinephrine, the drug used to resuscitate people. At that point,
Greene regained a pulse, but the autopsy shows that his heart had stopped
beating for 45 minutes prior to the epinephrine administration.
A subsequent scan
of the brain showed severe damage and he remained comatose until his
death at 8:27 p.m. that evening.
Cause
of death
According to the
autopsy report, the immediate cause of death is "acute hypoxic-ischemic
encephalopathy," which simply stated means a sudden lack of oxygen to
the brain.
Greene was
restrained during his seizure, and according to his autopsy report, physical
restraint could have contributed to his death.
The use of extreme
restraint was reported by inmates on the scene early on in a CBC News'
investigation.
"I watched
the guards handcuff him, shackle him, throw him on his stomach. They held down
his head with two hands and he was shaking forcefully," said King during
an interview with CBC News in May.
According to the
autopsy report, Greene had "a sudden, witnessed seizure following which he
began thrashing about and becoming violently aggressive, requiring him to be
restrained. He was cuffed and shackled in the prone position until he calmed
down and allowed to return to his cell. A short time later he had another
seizure, at which time he was again restrained."
Medication
denied
Rochelle Pranteau
pictured with her husband, Errol Greene. Pranteau is renewing calls for an
inquest into her husband's death. (Courtesy of Rochelle Pranteau)
Pranteau said her
husband was denied medication while in custody, which could explain the low
levels of valproic acid in Greene's body. According to the pathologist's
section of Greene's autopsy report, "toxicologic analysis of antemortem
plasma taken prior to his death revealed a subtherapeutic level of valproic
acid, which would have made him susceptible to having a seizure."
Greene's concerns
about medication would be the last words Pranteau would hear from her
husband, but the conversation that day started on a much more positive note.
"I was
telling him that I needed him more than ever for baby, and he was ready to
change his life around for the better, for his family. And I can tell he was
sincere and ready this time. But because of what happened I wasn't able to see
it," said Pranteau.
Inquest
pending
Pranteau wants an
inquest into her husband's death.
Manitoba
Corrections refuses to comment on the Winnipeg Remand Centre's response to
Greene's medical emergency and its failure to administer prescription
medications. Manitoba Corrections would only confirm that the
department completed an internal review of the circumstances leading up to
the death of an inmate on May 1, 2016.
An inquest into
Greene's death is in the hands of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The
office confirmed with CBC News that the decision to call an inquest is pending.
Two other inmates
have died at the Winnipeg Remand Centre in the past two weeks.
One died on Oct. 13; the other died Tuesday.
A protest is
planned Wednesday outside the Winnipeg Remand Centre.
Another inmate
died at the Winnipeg Remand Centre on Tuesday
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