N.L. justice minister pledges to find out what happened to dead inmate

Newfoundland and Labrador's justice minister vowed on Tuesday to get to the bottom of what happened to an inmate who died last month in Her Majesty's Penitentiary in St. John's.

Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy was not commenting Wednesday on the meeting he had had with Austin Aylward, whose son Austin Aylward Jr., 31, died on March 22.  

The chief medical officer is still working to determine how he died.

Aylward was in jail after pleading guilty this winter to a break-in in Clarenville.

His parents had begged a judge not to send their son — who had depression and bipolar disorder — to jail, but rather to the Waterford psychiatric hospital in St. John's.

Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees president Carol Furlong, whose union represents corrections officers at the penitentiary, admitted they're ill-equipped to deal with people with mental health problems.

"The training that's provided is very minimal. Lots of times people come to, are sent to prison for example, and they don't even have their medications. That's a big problem," she said.