Coroner examines final hours of unhoused Innu man’s life

Article content

The coroner’s inquest into the death of Raphaël André, a 51-year-old Innu man whose body was discovered inside a portable outdoor toilet in January 2021 steps away from an aid shelter, began Monday with a reconstruction of the last hours of his life.

The goal, said coroner Stéphanie Gamache, is to deduce how André — a chronic alcoholic who was well-known to health-care workers and Montreal’s network of shelters for unhoused people — died, and to find fixes to prevent another similar death.

Article content

Article content

“We are going to concentrate on and look at and understand the structures in place in Montreal for vulnerable people like Raphäel André at the moment of his death,” Gamache said. “This exercise will allow me to understand the factors that contributed to his tragedy, and to respond to the questions that it evokes.”

Among the witnesses called to testify are Montreal’s public health director Mylène Drouin and officials from Quebec’s Health Ministry. The inquest runs for two weeks in May and two weeks in June.

At the time of André’s death, Quebec was under a provincewide curfew mandated by the Coalition Avenir Québec government in an effort to stifle the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The orders posed a significant problem for unhoused people, some of whom feared being stopped by police if they were found outdoors.

“When the premier said ‘everybody has to stay home’ and you were homeless and there weren’t enough shelters, we knew something was going to happen,” said Nakuset, executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal and the director of development for the day shelter Resilience Montreal, who attended the inquest as an observer. “I remember going to a rally and saying ‘someone is going to die.’ Unfortunately, it was Raphäel André.”

Article content

Article content

Shelters were open during the curfew, but many in the unhoused community were confused about where they could go, Nakuset said.

The problem was and remains a lack of emergency shelters, she said. In particular, Montreal needs a shelter dedicated to Indigenous men, because they are overrepresented among the unhoused population.

On the day before he was found dead, André had been admitted to hospital after suffering a fall, testified Alexandre Bertrand, sergeant-detective of the Montreal police. André was released just three hours after he was admitted and went to the Open Door, a drop-in centre he frequented near Milton St. and Parc Ave.

Beds had previously been available at the drop-in centre, but public health officials who were trying to quell a COVID-19 outbreak in the unhoused community ordered it closed at 9:30 every night. André didn’t want to leave, but was told there was no choice. Staff organized a taxi to another shelter where there was space, but he refused it.

Bertrand was called to the scene in the morning. André was found lying on his stomach in the portable toilet, with one empty beer in the urinal and a full can of Old Milwaukee on the ground. There were no signs of violence, Bertrand said.

Article content

One witness told police she had tried to use the toilet in the evening, but saw a man inside she thought was sleeping. The next day she found out it was André.

“He was my good friend,” the woman told police. “I loved him.”

Bertrand noted there was an arrest warrant out for André because he had failed to make a court appearance linked to allegations that he verbally abused a nurse’s aide during a hospital visit, uttering death threats. At the time, friends said this likely added to his fear of being stopped by police.

On Monday afternoon, an art therapist who was part of a team of doctors, psychiatrists and social workers at the Notre-Dame Hospital who specialize in counselling the unhoused, testified she worked with André during four of his hospital visits, some of which lasted more than a month. While under care and away from alcohol, André would stabilize and responded well to therapy, she said. But he also professed that he preferred to lead a nomadic lifestyle that allowed him to roam through the province and back to his home in Schefferville, so finding a permanent lodging solution for him was complicated.

“We were still working toward some form of solution that could help,” she said.

rbruemmer@postmedia.com

Article content

Article content