Saskatoon, SK (Canadian Press) – The brother of a Saskatchewan man who died after making a panicked 911 call is criticizing RCMP for not responding.
Perry Armitage also says the Mounties failed to inform family members that the call was ever made. “I’m just completely bewildered,” Armitage said Tuesday from his home in New Westminster, B.C. “It’s unfathomable, really, that our family would be treated this way.”
His 46-year-old brother, Lindsay Armitage, had been missing for three days before he was found dead Dec. 5 in snow-covered bush near the resort community of Waskesiu in Prince Albert National Park.
An autopsy has yet to confirm how he died.
Perry Armitage said RCMP led him to believe the death was probably a suicide. Officers didn’t find a suicide note but did uncover evidence the man had been using drugs.
He said the local coroner mentioned two weeks after his brother was found that he had called 911 about an hour before he died.
“It was a complete shock. I thought the RCMP would have told us. If you’re planning a suicide, you don’t call 911 asking for help.”
He said he made several phone calls and sent complaint letters and emails to the RCMP before he finally got a call back from a senior officer.
Armitage said the officer explained that Mounties didn’t respond to the 911 call because his brother didn’t give his location, so they didn’t know where to look for him.
A transcript of the call tells a slightly different story.
“He’s heard in a very highly agitated state claiming that some people were chasing him and they were going to kill him,” said Armitage.
He said his brother told the operator he was on the road into the Elk Ridge Resort. His abandoned van was eventually found a short distance from the resort hotel.
Armitage said his brother had given most of the information to the 911 operator before his call was transferred to an RCMP dispatch operator. The distraught man talked a bit longer before the call cut out in the remote area.
A constable with the Waskesiu detachment was notified of the call at 3:15 a.m. but chose not to attend and went back to sleep, said Armitage.
He said the senior officer he spoke with about the matter admitted that “it’s not the way I would have handled things.”
“That’s as close as I got to an apology.”
Armitage and other family members have filed an official complaint against the RCMP. The force is conducting an internal investigation into what happened.
Assistant commissioner Dale McGowan, head of the RCMP in Saskatchewan, said he was aware of the case but only had preliminary details and did not want to comment.
Armitage admits his brother was going through a rough time before he died. The construction worker had just broken up with his fiancee and found out he needed a heart transplant.
He had a history of substance abuse and, despite cleaning up in 2005, had recently slipped back into his addiction.
Three weeks before his death, he attempted suicide by taking pills. But his brother said he immediately called his former wife and told her what he had done.
It was a cry for help and attention, said Armitage, who believes it may also have influenced the way RCMP handled the 911 call.
He said the officer who drove Lindsay Armitage to or from the hospital after he took the pills was the same constable who chose not to respond to the 911 call the day he died.
Perry said his brother may have been using drugs, and may have imagined being chased, but RCMP still had a duty to respond to his call for help.
“Maybe he was whacked out and hallucinating. I don’t know. But maybe he wasn’t.
“I don’t think that is a justification for failing to act at all .”
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