The coroner’s inquest into the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet stopped to regroup Thursday after her mother told jurors she saw Toronto police officers push her daughter toward the balcony.
Claudette Beals made the statement while describing the day in May 2020 when her daughter fell from the 24th floor of the family’s west-end apartment building. Lawyers for several parties raised concerns in the jury’s absence about what they called previously undisclosed evidence. Counsel for the officers said their clients had not been given a chance to respond to the allegation when they testified earlier in the week. The presiding coroner called a recess so lawyers could discuss how to proceed.
Ms. Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman, died on May 27, 2020. Her mother had called police hoping officers would help take her to a mental health facility. Six officers and two paramedics ended up at the apartment after several 911 calls over about 30 minutes, and video played at the inquest shows she fell around 5:39 p.m. while first responders were present.
This is not the first time Ms. Beals has said police were responsible. In a video shortly after the death, she said police had killed her daughter. The family’s lawyer later clarified that she had not witnessed it and that it was what she believed at the time. Thursday’s testimony is different: it is sworn evidence, given in her own words, that she saw it.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the province’s police oversight agency, cleared the officers in August 2020, finding they had tried to de-escalate and that their efforts were unsuccessful. The family rejected that finding. In June 2022 it filed a CA$10-million lawsuit against the officers, the SIU director, Ontario’s attorney general, the City of Toronto and the housing corporation.
The inquest is not a trial and cannot assign legal blame. Its scope is narrower: how police and first responders are told about epilepsy. Ms. Korchinski-Paquet had a history of seizures and had two that morning, a neurologist testified. Jurors can issue recommendations, and the family has pressed for them to be binding and carried out quickly.
For Black and Indigenous families in Ontario, an inquest is often the only public forum where a death involving police is examined in open court, more than six years after the fact in this case. What happens to Thursday’s allegation, and whether the officers are recalled to answer it, will be settled when the hearing resumes. The inquest was scheduled to last 14 days.
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