'I don't believe that he's still alive': Reid Bricker's mom
Family says they found a suicide note
The hope of finding 33-year-old artist Reid Bricker alive is fading, his family says.
"I don't believe he's still alive," his mother, Bonnie Bricker, told CBC News.
Bricker vanished Oct. 24 after he was discharged from Health Sciences Centre at 3:20 a.m. He was under care for attempting suicide.
It was the third time in 10 days he had been released from a Winnipeg hospital after attempting suicide.
"The thing that makes me so mad is the police did everything they could to give [hospital staff] the tool to keep him there and they didn't," Bricker said.
Bricker said she has reason to believe the suicide note is recent. She spoke about it at a vigil Sunday to underline further how seriously feels her son was failed by Manitoba's mental-health-care system.
Document details police officer's concerns for Bricker's life
The Friday night Reid visited Health Sciences Centre, he was taken there by police — following a suicide attempt — who documented concerns he was at risk of harming himself again.
When police released Reid into the care of hospital staff at HSC, they filed a statement known as a Form 3, ordering he have an involuntarily assessment by a doctor.
Police released Reid into the care of the hospital at 12:42 a.m., the family said. He was assessed and was released by the hospital at 3:20 a.m.
"If you have somebody in front of you who's made three attempts on their own life, the police are giving you very strong verbiage that they have reason to believe that he's going to try and again that he's told them he's going to try again, why would just let them out at 3:30 in the morning?" said Bonnie Bricker.
"Obviously [Reid] couldn't make that decision.... All he could see in his head was 'I need to kill myself,' so it's infuriating and it's frustrating."
WRHA responds
CBC News asked the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority how someone police said was suicidal could be released a few hours later.
"It's important to recognize that a police assessment is just that. It's not an assessment done by trained medical professionals," Lori Lamont, vice president of interprofessional practice, said Monday.
Lamont said, when police bring someone to a Winnipeg emergency room on a Form 3, that simply means the person must be assessed by a medical professional such as a psychiatric nurse, on-call physician or psychiatrist, who may or may not choose to admit the patient.
If a patient is not involuntarily admitted, Lamont said, they have the ability to leave to go when the assessment is complete. She said the WRHA has a "safe discharge" policy, which offers organizing transportation and follow up care.
"Unless someone is involuntarily admitted under the care of a psychiatrist we can't force them to make the decisions [that] perhaps we would like them to make," Lamont said, adding she could not speak specifically to the Bricker case except to say procedures were followed when he left the hospital at 3:20 a.m.
Still, Bonnie Bricker said "somebody dropped the ball." She and her husband George can't comprehend why their son was released alone, downtown, in the middle of the night. The family also said they should have been notified he was free to leave. However, hospital staff are prohibited from contacting anyone, unless the patient consents, or staff feel the patient is in "immediate" danger under the Personal Health Information Act (PHIA).
"They could have kept him a few more hours [until daylight].... He wasn't really taking up any space. I've seen the tapes, and he was just curled into a little ball in their psych room. He was all by himself," she said.
"Obviously [Reid] couldn't make that decision.... All he could see in his head was 'I need to kill myself,' so it's infuriating and it's frustrating," said Bricker.
Downtown businesses asked to review surveillance
In 10 days of searching for Bricker, all tips and leads have turned up dry. The family said the only place they know Bricker visited after his discharge from hospital was his downtown apartment. He has not been seen since.
The family is appealing to all downtown businesses with surveillance cameras to review footage from 4 a.m. until noon on Saturday, Oct. 24, for any sight of Bricker.
"He can't just disappear into thin air. Somebody's got to have a surveillance that shows something. At least we hope," his mother said.
"If we have a direction and a time, then the police have a starting point, but at this point in time we have nothing."
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