A distraught man charged in a series of West End stabbings attempted suicide inside North Fraser Pretrial jail Friday, just days after being taken off suicide watch, The Vancouver Sun has learned.
Now Jerome Bonneric’s lawyer wants to know how an inmate with serious mental health issues was given access to an open third floor walkway from which he jumped at about 7:30 a.m.
“Why would you allow a profoundly depressed individual to have access to the third level from which he could hurl himself to his death? Why and how did that happen?” Bellows said Friday.
He said Bonneric, a French national, is in hospital with head and hip injuries awaiting surgery.
Bonneric, 33, was charged last month with four counts of aggravated assault, four counts of assault with a weapon, three counts of common assault and one count of assaulting an officer after a rampage at a Barclay Street apartment building where he had been staying. Bonneric had been in St. Paul’s hospital just days before the attack.
“From the beginning, it’s been clear that there’ve been mental health issues,” Bellows said. “He had a psychotic break. He was profoundly depressed and taken off suicide watch a few days ago. But to give him access to one of the few areas in the prison where he could leap to his death and ignore the danger of suicide is absolutely devastating.”
Bellows said an investigation is underway into what happened “for all the good that it’s going to do him.”
Sgt. Barb Thornborough, of the Coquitlam RCMP, said police responded to the emergency at the facility and are investigating.
But she also said a review of a recording of the incident indicates there was no foul play involved.
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North Fraser staff referred calls about the incident to government official Marnie Mayhew, who speaks for B.C. Corrections.
Mayhew said she couldn’t comment on the specifics of Bonneric’s case because of privacy laws.
“The incident is under review,” Mayhew said. “We always do an investigation after a serious incident.”
She said that B.C. jails “have very extensive mental health supports.”
“We do everything we can to eliminate risk in our centres. There is always going to be some risk. We can’t eliminate all risk,” Mayhew said.
Bonneric’s attempted suicide is not the first case of a North Fraser inmate jumping from the third floor to a common living area below.
In April 2012, Roland Joseph Bourque, 69, plummeted to his death from the same location.
The B.C. Coroners Service announced last month that an inquest would be held into Bourque’s death.
Mayhew said that because of the Bourque case, Corrections has a plan to increase the railing heights for the walkways throughout North Fraser.
“We have costed out the different options of increasing the railing height, which are already above approved building codes,” she said, adding that the work should be done within the next few months.
Bellows said he hopes changes are made to the way mentally ill inmates are managed within B.C. institutions.
“There are so many issues in terms of the care of mentally ill inmates that someone has to get serious about their treatment in the prisons,” he said. “Perhaps this case is the one to bring home what happens with mentally ill people in the prisons.”
He said both himself and the French consul-general had been in communication with North Fraser about Bonneric’s mental health issues before his suicide attempt.
“I have never experienced feelings of devastation in my 38 years as a criminal lawyer like I did this morning when I got the call,” Bellows said. “On top of the tragedy of the people who were injured (from the stabbings), now my client was not kept safe in the institution and it is just appalling.”
Dean Purdy, of the B.C. Government and Services Employees Union, said he was informed by union representatives at the facility that “an inmate jumped from the third tier down into the day room.”
He said his members are dealing with more and more pre-trial prisoners with serious mental health issues.
“We are becoming the default mental health facility because of all of the closures of mental health facilities over the last few years,” Purdy said.
He said the physical layout of North Fraser, where other suicides have occurred, “is a concern for us.”
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