17 April 2012
Staff ‘failings’ in cell death ordeal
[…]
Mr Wilk, of Goldburn Close, Ingol, Preston, was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his partner after a party in March last year and taken to Preston Police Station.
He was found lifeless in his cell the next morning.
A jury at Preston Coroner’s Court heard a spray Mr Wilk used to control chest pains had not been booked in at the custody suite along with other medication brought from his home.
The court was also told an interpreter had not taken notes of a conversation at the station in which Mr Wilk explained, in Polish, that he was suffering serious chest pain, akin to a heart attack.
The jury ruled Mr Wilk had died from a coronary atheroma, a heart complaint. They returned a narrative verdict which said: “We think it more probable than not that the joint failings of police, Medacs and translation procedures are all contributing factors to the death of Mr Wilk.”
The verdict added police had been too slow to retrieve and record some of Mr Wilk’s medication.
The verdict also said that Mr Wilk had received a “poor assessment” at the station by health care professionals from Medacs, a firm used by the police, and that the lack of an interpreter’s transcript meant they could not tell whether a custody sergeant had been warned Mr Wilk was suffering from chest pains in the hours before his death.
[…]
No comments:
Post a Comment