Police officer tried to reason with Al-Hasnawi as he lay on the sidewalk, court hears
Samantha Craggs | CBC News | Posted: December 4, 2020 3:27 PM | Last Updated: December 4, 2020
2 former Hamilton paramedics charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life
A Hamilton police officer says she tried to reason with Yosif Al-Hasnawi as he lay dying on the sidewalk from a bullet wound that emergency responders around him thought was a BB gun injury.
But in hindsight, she said, "we should have kept more of an open mind in terms of the type of weapon that was used."
Sgt. Nesreen Shawihat was asked in a Hamilton court Friday if she said something to Al-Hasnawi similar to "Your dad says you want to be a doctor. Is this how a doctor acts?" She said she wasn't sure.
But she agreed with the defence that she did try to convince Al-Hasnawi to behave more sensibly as he appeared incoherent and agitated on the sidewalk near Sanford Avenue South and Main Street East.
"You tried to talk some sense into him," defence lawyer Jeffrey Manishen told her, and Shawihat agreed.
The Hamilton Police Service sergeant also said paramedics used soft restraints to pin the 19-year-old to the stretcher in the back of the ambulance. She didn't suggest the restraints, she said, but she held one of his wrists to help the paramedics.
Some flailing
Al-Hasnawi was flailing his arms and legs, she said, but it wasn't aggressive. The flailing, the court heard, was "minimal."
She also said the paramedics were behaving professionally.
Shawihat was a Crown witness in the trial of two former Hamilton paramedics. Christopher Marchant, 32, and Steven Snively, 55, are charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life.
It's a landmark superior court trial, one that scrutinizes emergency responders for treatment they provided at the scene.
Al-Hasnawi was shot with a .22-calibre handgun near the Al Moustafa Islamic Centre at 8:55 p.m. on Dec. 2, 2017. Paramedics arrived at 9:09 p.m. Twenty-three minutes later, they left the scene to take Al-Hasnawi to the hospital. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 9:58 p.m.
Fast but incremental decline
The court has heard that paramedics and police on scene thought the Brock University medical sciences student had been shot with a BB gun.
Dr. Najma Ahmed, an expert in trauma and critical care, also testified. Ahmed is surgeon-in-chief at St. Michael's Hospital, and has an extensive background in trauma surgery.
The bullet hit Al-Hasnawi's common right iliac vein and artery, the court has heard, and caused massive internal bleeding.
Ahmed said even if Al-Hasnawi had been taken right to a lead trauma hospital and cared for by an expert team armed with the necessary tools, his chance of survival would have been about 50 per cent.
But at St. Joe's, the court has heard, doctors ordered blood that didn't come. And every minute that ticks by is precious, Ahmed said.
She walked through the stages of shock experienced by someone with massive blood loss, including agitation, confusion and eventually coma. As with all medicine, she said, the more expertise someone has, the easier it is to identify physiological aberrations that point to incremental decline.
But early on, she testified, Al-Hasnawi had high diastolic blood pressure, which was a warning sign.
'Literally, this patient has minutes'
She told the court that any injury that penetrates the body cavity is serious, even a BB gun wound. Bullets that enter the body are designed to damage organs, she said.
In a case like Al-Hasnawi's, she said, "literally, this patient has minutes. An hour."
Friday ended the second week of the five-week trial. Justice Harrison Arrell alone will render a verdict.
The Crown attorneys are Linda Shin and Scott Patterson. Manishen is representing Marchant, and Michael DelGobbo is representing Snively.
The person who shot Al-Hasnawi, Dale King, was acquitted last year of second-degree murder. That case is being appealed.