Questions follow death of mental health patient in Halifax

HALIFAX – There remain more questions than answers in the wake of an incident at a south-end Halifax high-rise apartment building that resulted in the death of a young man Monday.

Staff at the Nova Scotia Hospital reported to the Halifax Regional Police in the afternoon that a 27-year-old man had gone missing. A few hours later, officers tracked him to his apartment on South Park Street.

“The door was barricaded, they went in and when they got there they saw the man who was on the balcony,” said Ron MacDonald, the director of Nova Scotia’s Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT). “Subsequently, he went over the balcony.”

The man was transported to hospital, but later died from his injuries. His name has not been released.

Police have not commented on the incident, and have turned the case over to SIRT, which will examine whether there was any wrongdoing on the part of the police officers involved.

The case is SIRT’s 42nd since the unit began operation in April of 2012, but the first to investigate an incident of someone going missing from an institution. It will be the fifth case involving a suicide that occurred while the person in question was dealing with police.

“I would say the majority of our cases involve mental health issues one way or the other,” said MacDonald.

Dr. Scott Theriault, the clinical director of the mental health and addictions program for Capital Health, won’t confirm if the man was out on a pass when he died.

“It would be not unusual, and in fact, probably the norm that most of our patients get passes from the hospital,” he said.

Theriault says patients are assessed on a case-by-case basis. At the Nova Scotia Hospital, most patients would start with brief passes of 15 minutes, and typically they would be unescorted.

“If patients are missing from the hospital, it’s usually that they’ve been granted privileges and for some reason they haven’t come back from that pass,” said Theriault.

The hospital says it will review the case to see what can be learned and possibly changed to prevent similar tragedies in the future.