Jury makes extensive recommendations following inquest into Hamilton Wentworth Detention Centre drug deaths

After more than 48 hours of deliberation, jury makes extensive recommendations following inquest into Hamilton Wentworth Detention Centre drug deaths.

“It’s our hope that the recommendations suggested to you and those that you may provide of your own accord after listening so attentively and asking such important, probing and insightful questions over the past month and a half will be adopted by those to whom they are directed and that they will make a difference.”

That quote was just a small portion of Kevin Egan’s closing address to the jury delivered last Wednesday at the end of a six week super inquest into a number of overdoses at the Hamilton Wentworth Detention Centre between 2012 – 2016.  Kevin Egan, partner with McKenzie Lake Lawyers LLP, was representing April Tykoliz, the sister of Martin Tykoliz, one of 8 men who lost their lives too soon from a system that failed them.  In his address Kevin stated:

“The Hamilton Wentworth Detention Centre – supposedly part of the Ontario “Correctional” Service, but a place where anything but “corrections” takes place.  It’s an overcrowded, lawless institution where inmates are warehoused, not helped; where ranges built for 20 men to live, warehouses 72 men”. 

The result of the inquest was 62 recommendations put forward to prevent similar deaths behind bars in the future.  National reporter Molly Hayes reports full details in an article titled “Inquest makes 60 sweeping recommendations to prevent future drug overdose deaths behind bars in Ontario” in The Globe and Mail on May 18^th, 2018.”  

Here is a full copy of Kevin Egan’s closing address to the jury, now part of the public record.  It’s length speaks to the myriad of details brought forward in this lengthy inquest and the decisions made which ultimately killed Marty Tykoliz and the system that failed him.  It includes details of Marty’s last days in the centre.  Warning:  this address contains details that some readers may find disturbing.