Mesic inquest enters 2nd week

(Updated)

The public inquest into the police shooting death of Steve Mesic picked up where it left off on Friday.

This was a very difficult day for Steve Mesic’s family because on June 7th — just this past Saturday — was one year since Steve was killed. And dozens of friends and family gathered at his gravesite to remember him. And today during testimony, we heard from Special Investigations Unit officers. And we saw some graphic images of the scene of death.

Images of Mesic’s body were blurred but you could clearly see bullet holes in his chest. And Mesic’s mother said ‘seeing that put her in the same state as when she first learned of her son’s death. And Mesic’s girlfriend Sharon Dorr, who gave birth to her son just after he died, she and her father left and did not come back for the afternoon session.

We learned for the SIU officers that it was impossible to determine how close Mesic came to police while yielding the shovel before he was shot. It’s been a point of contention during this inquest because the bullet casings were found far from the body. But investigators told us today that there are many ways that those bullet casings could have wound up where they were found.

And this afternoon, we heard from a St. Joseph’s psychiatrist who treated Mesic before he signed himself out and walked into traffic a couple of times on the way home before ending up in a deadly confrontation with police. She said that he was depressed, he had struggled from a difficult childhood and he talked about wanting to kill himself. But she felt that he was responding well to treatment before she left for a conference two days before the incident.

And as for the jury, asking for recommendations — she said one thing that could help would be a better system in the hospital itself for tracking where patients go. Because there are a couple of instances where Steve Mesic is recorded as being inside the hospital when in fact he was lying dead seven kilometres away.