Smith inquest: Day 1
Posted Nov 2, 2010 05:07:24 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A coroner’s inquest into a teen’s death in jail continues today in Toronto.
The inquest heard yesterday from a lawyer who called Ashley Smith’s death one of the most “outrageous and barbaric examples” of mistreatment of a mentally ill person that Canada has ever witnessed.
Julian Falconer said prison managers at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener had instructed correctional officers not to enter the cell when the 19 year old placed a ligature around her neck.
He said Smith died “as a result of federal correctional abuse.”
In the last 11 months of her life, Smith was transferred 17 times between prisons and other facilities in Canada.
The coroner is limiting the inquest to the 13 weeks she spent in Ontario.
