Hourly checks 'done too quickly' the night Traigo Andretti bled to death in cell, warden tells inquest
Dan Zakreski | CBC News | Posted: October 30, 2018 8:59 PM | Last Updated: October 30, 2018
Officer who did checks has since resigned
Jurors at a coroner's inquest in Saskatoon heard how Traigo Andretti bled to death in his cell at the Regional Psychiatric Centre, despite staff tasked with hourly checks to ensure that he was safe.
The officer responsible for doing the overnight checks, which involved making sure there were "living, breathing bodies" in the cells, has since resigned and the prison hospital has changed how it checks on inmates, acting warden Lesia Sorokan testified Tuesday.
"Hourly rounds were conducted, but they were not conducted properly," she said.
"They were done too quickly."
Under questioning by coroner's counsel Robin Ritter, she said the officer did a "walk by" and, at best, glanced through the small window on the cell doorway. The centre determined this by reviewing video from the night of July 2, 2016.
In the wake of the suicide, there are regular reviews of how staff do the rounds.
Andretti had slashed a large gash in his left arm and then dangled it into a makeshift basin he'd built underneath his bunk.
Andretti was a convicted double murderer serving two life sentences. He had been transferred from a Manitoba prison to the Saskatoon facility because of concerns that he would kill himself. He arrived in Saskatoon in April 2016 and was dead by July.
Andretti was convicted of first-degree murder in 2014 for the death of his wife, Jennifer McPherson.
Her remains were found scattered on a remote island off the east coast of Vancouver Island.
Andretti was subsequently charged with second-degree murder in the 2006 slaying of Myrna Letandre in Manitoba, for which he later pleaded guilty.
Some of Letandre's dismembered remains were found in 2013 in a Winnipeg rooming house where Andretti had been living.
The last of 13 witnesses is scheduled to testify Wednesday.