Held in Edmonton on an unpaid ticket, Danny Robinson was ‘forced’ to land by corrections officers until his brain ran out of oxygen and his heart stopped, an upcoming autopsy report shows to be returned to his mother. Eight months ago, the Edmonton Police Service dismissed the case without filing a lawsuit.
Sitting in the kitchen of her small home in Orillia, Ontario, Marilyn Hayward struggles to control her emotions as she reads and reads her son’s autopsy report.
” They are mixed emotions. It is not easy to read a report of how her son died. “
Danny Robinson, 50, is set to be released from the Edmonton Remand Center on Aug. 24 after his family paid for the ticket that led to his arrest.
Instead of in the detention center, his mother found him in the hospital. Her son had a bruise on the face, a fracture of the orbital bone and almost no brain activity. He died six days later.
In the hands of Marilyn Hayward, written in black and white, is the information she has been trying to capture for months, the exact cause of her son’s death: hypoxic ischemic brain injury caused by cardiac arrest by holding the lying position.
In other words, the medical examiner believes Danny Robinson’s brain was starved of oxygen because of the way he immobilized correctional officers: flattened on stomach, hands cuffed behind back and held to the ground with force.
The passage of this report prompted Marilyn Hayward to draw different conclusions from those reached by the authorities. They are at fault. That’s what I understood. They are at faulthe says.
But in 15 pages of medical jargon, some words are confusing. It is written there that she will have a child bad habit and I wish refuses to obey orders.
The deaths were recorded as unintentional. The Edmonton Police Service (EPS) also determined that the cause was not criminal.
[Les responsables] they are leaving. That was the worstend of Marilyn Hayward, unbelievable.
The autopsy report mentioned some of her son’s injuries, including a bruise under the scalp, but was not related to the cause of his death.
According to his mother, however, the conclusion remains the same: Yes, they beat him to death, but it was an accident. […] How could this be an accident?
Fuzzy circumstances
Danny Robinson was arrested Aug. 23 near his home in Edmonton. He had an unpaid fine on his criminal record for driving without insurance in 2019.
The first version of the events Danny Robinson’s mother said he got was what a detention center staff gave him on the phone: his son was waiting to be released, but he refused to wear a mask and became aggressive. It would have taken some correctional officers and a sedative to subdue him.
The Ministry of Justice has refused to certify or deny this version, citing privacy protection law.
An 11 day police investigation
It took three days before the Edmonton Police Service was notified about the incident and began an investigation.
On Sept. 7, the same day of the autopsy, a police officer called Marilyn Hayward and her two other sons to tell them the case was closed.
They recorded the call. L ‘EPS will not file criminal charges, said the inspector. Questions, anger, misunderstanding come together at the end of the line. As an explanation, the inspector cited the autopsy.
He said, however, that he could not provide further details and that the medical examiner’s office was to inform the rest.
Disclosure of medical records
Over the months, information from other sources began to reach Marilyn Hayward.
She got the notes from the Hospital and the paramedics who came to pick up her son.
They relate that, during an argument of approximately 5 minutes, Danny Robinson received a blow to the head, that he was sprayed with pepper spray, that he became more agitated and then was unconscious. He was also given 10 mg of the sedative Midazolam.
Her heart stopped at 9:09 pm An ambulance called 11 minutes later.
He is now accompanied by nurses and paramedics working at the detention center. They were able to resuscitate him at 9:30 p.m.
In addition to brain damage from cardiac arrest, doctors at the Royal Alexandra Hospital noticed that Danny Robinson had a broken bone near his eye and small bleeding in his abdomen, near his pancreas and stomach.
Other details, as disturbing, were reported by a witness to the dispute. The latter makes sure it has nothing to do with refusing to wear a mask.
One witness was never questioned by police
I can not breathe.
Help me.
These are the words that bother Michael Klassen. He said he heard them through the closed door of a cell at the Edmonton Remand Center on Aug. 24.
They were the last Danny Robinson would say, before his heart stopped.
I try not to be too traumatized, but brutal. When we hear of a free man being beaten to death by the guards, it imprints on our mindssaid Michael Klassen, still shaken.
The 39-year-old, who lives in Saskatoon, will be released along with Danny Robinson.
He said they were having a harmless conversation as they were waiting for their turn in the hallway when an officer approached them and accused them of talking to him.
An altercation allegedly took place, in which Danny Robinson allegedly accused the agent to act like an asshole. The guard allegedly replied: Did you know? You won’t hang out with others and he would have tried to push her towards a cell.
The guard started to strike him and all we heard was, “Stop resisting, put your hands behind your back”recollection of Michael Klassen.
He swears he saw Danny Robinson do nothing but protest and regain his own weight to stop the guard trying to push him.
Other officers rushed at them.
Michael Klassen said he did not see the rest of the clash, as he and the other prisoners were pushed aside and taken to another cell, but he heard it.
He remembers that Help me and the I can not breathe gave way to silence.
Michael Klassen said police investigators never contacted him for his side of the story.
The police and the Ministry of Justice passed the money
In an email response sent to CBC/Radio-Canada on Sept. 7, an Edmonton Police Department spokesman said the police investigation was closed.
In two subsequent e-mails, he reiterated that it was the same day the autopsy had been determined that there was no crime in this case.
” An autopsy performed on September 7, 2021 and a final report received on March 18, 2022 determined that the death was not criminal. “
Alberta’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner maintains that it is not the medical examiner’s duty to determine that.
” Medical examiners do not determine if the death was due to a criminal act.[…] It is a judgment that rests with the police, crown prosecutors and the courts. “
The nature of death listed in the autopsy report is a medical judgment.
It can be described as unintentional in all cases where physical examination has not been possible to identify clear intent to cause deathcan we read on the Alberta Department of Justice website.
Annoyingly the police said, “The medical examiner said accidental death, our job is done!” , said the president of the Canadian Prison Law Association, Tom Engel. This is a way of avoiding responsibility.
In an email to CBC/Radio-Canada, an Edmonton Police Department spokesman confirmed that the investigation into Danny Robinson’s death was thoroughly.
[Elle] including all standard methods of investigation, including watching surveillance video, interviewing witnesses and working with the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Asked about witness Michael Klassen, the spokesman replied that investigators simply did not reach him.
The Ministry of Justice says in its part that an internal investigation into the incident has been launched, as required by law.
However, he declined to say whether this investigation was over or whether employees could be punished, cited again, by the Privacy Act.
Marilyn Hayward hired a lawyer to file a civil lawsuit.
More than eight months later, he was discouraged by the entire investigation and justice system, but he felt he could not give up.
[Danny] is a good person in so many ways. […] I can’t accept what happened to him. I cannot back down, pretend or let anyone stop me from fighting for my childhe says.
With information from Jorge Barrera and Madeline McNair
Source: Radio-Canada
