Shannon Sargent inquest begins with testimony from daughter, guard

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Nine hours before Shannon Nichole Sargent was found “lifeless and cold to the touch” alone in her cell at the Innes Road jail, the 34-year-old Indigenous woman was sent to the Ottawa Hospital by a concerned jail nurse who said Sargent needed immediate medical attention.  

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Just what happened when Sargent was taken to the hospital by correctional officers the evening of July 19, 2016, however, is in dispute, jurors heard Monday on the first day of a coroner’s inquest into Sargent’s death.

Sargent, who struggled with intravenous drug use and had open heart surgery less than two weeks earlier, died just after midnight on July 20 in the Ottawa Carleton Regional Detention Centre. The inquest under presiding coroner Dr. Robert Reddoch is mandatory under Ontario’s Coroner’s Act.

A Mohawk from Belleville, Sargent was remembered Monday as a kind and loving mother in testimony by her daughter, Shauna Sargent. Shauna was born when Shannon was a 14-year-old Grade 8 student, but she said her mother worked hard to keep Shauna surrounded by a circle of supportive women that included her grandmother and great-grandmother.

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Questioned by her lawyers from the Aboriginal Law Service, Shauna Sargent said the women in her family had endured intergenerational trauma and sexual abuse.

“I never grew up with a male figure in the household because women were all we needed,” she said. “We didn’t like to have men around. We just had each other.”

Shauna described how her mother would tell her she was going away on a “business trip” — trips Shauna later realized were really “benders” and drug use on the streets of Ottawa.

“She didn’t want to expose me to that life,” Shauna Sargent testified. “She was very good at being a good mom, or if she couldn’t be, then making sure I had good moms around me.”

Renee Montreuil, a correctional officer at the OCDC, testified she’d known Shannon Sargent for nearly all of her 20-year career at the jail. She described her as “well-liked and well-respected” by guards and other inmates and an “all-around good person.”

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Montreuil talked to Sargent when she arrived at the jail on July 19.

“She told me she was happy to be back at OCDC because she felt like we were her family,” Montreuil said, wiping away a tear and pausing to regain her composure.

But Sargent’s drug use had damaged her heart. On May 23, 2016, she was admitted to the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. After she agreed to seek drug treatment and stay sober, she underwent open heart surgery on July 7 to replace her aortic valve.

Although a discharge plan was in place that would see her live in a transitional home until a spot opened for her in a drug treatment centre, Sargent left the hospital on July 15 “with an unknown person” and disappeared for several days. She was arrested by Ottawa police on July 18 near Cumberland and George Streets, according to an agreed upon statement of facts read into the record by coroner counsel Mike Boyce.

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The reasons for her arrest are not a subject of the coroner’s inquest.

After spending the night in police cells, Sargent appeared in court on July 19 and, after complaining of chest pain, was sent to the Ottawa Hospital for assessment.

She was seen by an emergency room physician, who cleared her to be sent to the jail.

When she arrived there at 3:49 p.m., the required hospital discharge paperwork was missing, Boyce told the inquest. She was admitted anyway. The duty nurse at the OCDC did her own assessment and was worried about Sargent’s well-being, he said. Sargent had low blood pressure, admitted to recent cocaine and IV drug use; hadn’t filled her methadone prescription in several days; and had never bothered to fill her prescription for a C. difficile infection she suffered.

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“You’ll hear that the nurse said that she had to go back to the hospital immediately,” Boyce told the inquest.

Sargent was taken back to hospital by correctional officers, but was never seen by medical staff. The officer in charge of the transport is expected to testify he thought the trip was just to pick up the missing paperwork, Boyce said. He is expected to say he was told by hospital staff there was no need for them to see Sargent again so soon after her visit earlier in the day.

But that’s disputed by the hospital. The emergency department team leader, now retired, is expected to testify that he was never told about the seriousness of Sargent’s condition, Boyce said.

Sargent was back at the OCDC just 65 minutes after leaving for the hospital. Later that night she was found unresponsive in her cell and, despite resuscitation efforts by jail staff and paramedics, was declared dead at 1:20 a.m.

The inquest is expected to last 10 days and hear from 25 witnesses. Its aim is to determine who died, when, where and how they died, and by what means they died. Jurors can make recommendations to prevent future deaths, but cannot find fault.