Dangerous offender from Pangnirtung dies in custody
Tommy Veevee had been serving indeterminate sentence for sexual assaults; sentence was handed down in 1999
The Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon is where Tommy Veevee, a dangerous offender originally from Pangnirtung, died on Saturday, Correctional Service of Canada says. (Photo courtesy of Correctional Service of Canada)
A dangerous offender originally from Pangnirtung who had been serving an indeterminate sentence for sexual assaults he committed more than 25 years ago, died Jan. 28 in a Saskatchewan psychiatric facility, Correctional Service Canada says.
Tommy Veevee died at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, according to a news release the Correctional Service of Canada issued Saturday evening.
Veevee was convicted in November 1998 of two sexual assaults in Iqaluit in June and October of 1997, according to the sentence Judge Beverly Browne handed down in 1999.
He was sentenced to five years in a federal prison, but Browne recommended that sentence be served in a mental-health setting.
Browne also declared him to be a dangerous offender, meaning Veevee was to stay in jail unless a parole board — which reviews his case every two years — felt he could be released.
“Mr. Veevee has shown by his past behaviour an inability to control his sexual impulses,” she said at the time.
“He, unfortunately, has an odd amalgam of psychiatric and social conditions that make him difficult, hopefully not impossible, to treat.”
When Veevee was sentenced on the 1997 sexual assaults, the judge’s sentencing report took into consideration five previous sexual assault convictions that began in 1989 as well as a few convictions for “non-sexual and non-serious offences.”
By 1997, he faced what the judge called three “serious” offences in a five-month period. The second and third offences occurred while he was awaiting trial on the first.
It wasn’t immediately clear why Veevee, who was originally given a prison sentence, died in a psychiatric centre.
Corrections Canada’s five-sentence statement about Veevee’s death did not say how he died, but said the federal corrections service will review the death as it does with all deaths of people in its custody.
Roxane Braun, a spokesperson for the correctional service, said the service does not ordinarily release the cause of death for an inmate who dies in custody.
Veevee’s next of kin was notified, as were the police and coroner, the statement indicated.
won’t bring closure, but won’t bring tears either.
Sounds like he had a lot of metal issues, probably should have been in a mental institution long before 1999, sad that all that had to happen before he was put away.