Nunavut plane-jumper case medical, not criminal, police tell inquest

Julian Tologanak-Labrie’s behaviour during the early hours of April 15, 2009, was disturbing, said RCMP constables Violet Pokiak and Warren Hudym of the Yellowknife detachment. The two RCMP members delivered the 20-year-old Cambridge Bay man to the Stanton Territorial Hospital for treatment under the Mental Health Act, saying his case was medical, not criminal. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — The case of Julian Tologanak-Labrie was medical, not criminal, two RCMP members said at an inquest in Cambridge Bay yesterday.

Cst. Violet Pokiak, a 17-year veteran of the RCMP, testified she wasn’t surprised when she learned, on April 15, 2009, that the 20-year-old man from Cambridge Bay had jumped to his death from an aircraft about 180 kilometres south of Cambridge Bay.

Much earlier that day, Pokiak and Cst. Warren Hudym arrested the young man under the Mental Health Act, then turned him over to Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife.

The constables said Tologanak-Labrie’s responses to three simple questions didn’t reassure them.

To questions like “are you going to hurt himself” and “are you going to hurt others,” he answered “I don’t know.”

And as to why he held a knife that night, he answered “it’s a long story.”

And both constables said they found Tologanak unresponsive, sullen and sad.

He had “no expression on his face,” Hudym said, and was “motionless, expressionless and emotionless.”

Pokiak testified this is why she told doctors at the hospital that Tologanak-Labrie wanted to kill himself.

She said she had “a gut feeling” he was going to hurt himself and that “something was not right,” concerns she said she shared with medical staff at the hospital.

Pokiak and Hudym told the inquest that police could not hold Tologanak-Labrie any longer than they did because he had not committed any criminal offense that requires custody.

But at the same time, they didn’t want to release him to the streets.

The two were first called to Yellowknife’s Nova Hotel at 1:06 am April 15, 2009, after receiving a call that Tologanak-Labrie was causing a disturbance in a hotel suite occupied by Darlene and James Aknavigak.

The couple, long-time friends of Tologanak-Labrie, were visiting Yellowknife from Cambridge Bay to attend a hockey tournament that Tologanak-Labrie was playing in.

Darlene Aknavigak told the inquest that she and her husband wanted him to leave that night, but he wouldn’t go.

Aknavigak said in a transcript of a recorded call she made to the RCMP that night that she thought Tologanak-Labrie could be suicidal over problems with an ex-girlfriend.

“He’s just acting really weird… he’s just being, wandering around and snapping and he’s just not himself,” Aknavigak told the emergency dispatch operator.

Akavigak also said in her call that she thought Tologanak-Labrie might hurt himself, because “my husband and him were yelling back and forth… he is just depressed.”

A recording of the call that Darlene Aknavigak made to police was introduced as evidence at the inquest. A six-person jury and Tologanak-Labrie’s family members strained to hear it because of the absence of a sound amplification system.

Hudym also testified that he expected to find Tologanak-Labrie under the influence of drugs.

Hudym said he was wary that night because of a previous, unspecified firearms charge involving Tologanak-Labrie.

When Hudym arrived in repsonse to the Aknavigak’s call, he found Tologanak-Labrie in the kitchen, where the 20-year-old held a black-handled, serrated kitchen knife, about eight inches long.

Hudym repeatedly told Tologanak-Labrie to drop the knife, then drew his pistol, a Smith and Wesson nine-millimetre, because he feared he wouldn’t have enough time to protect himself, since Tologanak-Labrie stood only six to eight feet away.

After Tologanak-Labrie dropped the knife, the report states Hudym told him that other RCMP members “were on their way with a taser and that he would be tasered if he didn’t lie on the ground.”

By 1:19 am Tologanak-Labrie was cuffed and in custody.

“In my opinion that was not normal behaviour,” Huydm said of Tologanak-Labrie’s slow responses to his many requests to drop the knife and lie down.

But Tologanak was not drunk or on drugs that night, the RCMP members said.

Tologanak-Labrie’s mother, Navalik Helen Tologogak, his father, Mark Labrie, and other relatives had never before heard the recording of Aknavigak’s call to the RCMP or any of the other information contained in RCMP members’ testimonies.

“We were in the dark,” Labrie said.

Navalik Helen Tologanak said her son was unnaturally quiet during their last conversation.

She said her son had never had threatened suicide before, as far she knew, although he had received counselling.

The inquest, presided over by the Northwest Territories’ chief coroner, Garth Eggenberger, will hear from 13 witnesses including doctors, a social worker, pilots, police and Tologanak-Labrie’s family and friends.

By the morning of April 13, hospital staff had yet to testify at the inquest.