Accidental Deaths That Were Really Homicides

On Feb. 6, 2022, two people were found dead in the Kootenays, both with apparent head trauma and soaked in blood, one in Creston, the other about 150 kilometres away in Kimberley.

Police and coroners ruled both deaths accidental. An autopsy was conducted in one case but not in the other.

In November, almost three years later, Mitchell McIntyre, 65, faced a trial in B.C. Supreme Court on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of Julia Howe, 56, of Creston, whose autopsy revealed a .22-calibre bullet in her skull. It’s likely the autopsy was ordered only after McIntyre, who lived across the street from Howe, turned up at the Cranbrook RCMP detachment and asked to be arrested.

But neither police nor the BC Coroners Service will comment on the case of David Creamer, a former friend of McIntyre found dead the same day in Kimberley.

According to medical records later subpoenaed by the RCMP, McIntyre may have confessed in hospital to killing Creamer. But Creamer’s body had been cremated without an autopsy.

No forensic evidence was recovered before cremation. The BC Coroners Service will not say whether a coroner even attended the scene of Creamer’s death.

The cause of Creamer’s death will never be known.

News of the incorrect and simultaneous “accidental death” findings, first reported by the Vancouver Sun’s Susan Lazaruk last month, set alarm bells ringing for two B.C. veteran experts, one a former solicitor general and police chief, the other a former chief coroner and mayor of Vancouver.

How, they ask, can the public trust the BC Coroners Service, the lead agency monitoring the province’s toxic drug crisis, when such fundamental errors occur?

The BC Coroners Service lags far behind other provinces in its autopsy rates, as The Tyee’s Jen St. Denis has reported, and is much less rigorous than other provinces when it comes to investigations into overdoses.

Inquests, even more rare, occur automatically only when someone dies in police custody and then only years after the fact. Now, the professionalism, quality and competence of death scene investigations themselves is under scrutiny.

Overdose to homicide

Just a few weeks before news of the Kootenay “accidental death” rulings broke, the BC Coroners Service changed its finding in the April 2021 death of 18-year-old Samantha Sims-Somerville.

After initially ruling the death an accidental overdose, the coroners service changed the verdict to homicide after Sims-Somerville’s mother, Tracy Sims, conducted her own investigation, producing compelling evidence her daughter had been the victim of a deliberate attack.

Sims believes her daughter and another girl were given GHB, the date-rape drug, as a precursor to sexual assault. (The other girl lived.) Although news reports say an autopsy was conducted on Sims-Somerville, police quickly concluded there was insufficient evidence to pursue an investigation into the “accidental death.” The Victoria Police Department has now initiated a new inquiry as a result of the grieving mother’s relentless crusade.

“We're talking about a death,” says former solicitor general Kash Heed, now a Richmond city councillor. “We're talking about the death of an individual, a son, a daughter, a mother or father. How could you become so complacent... that we would not be attending those? How do you explain to a family, well, you know, this is what happened?

“The system is absolutely broken,” Heed said. “Is there a will to fix the system? Not unless there's a desire with our public policymakers and they're willing to put money into it.”

Heed believes an inquest must now be held into the Howe and Creamer deaths. Former chief coroner Larry Campbell, also former mayor of Vancouver, agrees. He’s ready to conduct the inquest if asked, given that the coroners service should not be expected to review its own conduct.

“From a government point of view, they’d better pay attention to this,” Campbell said in an interview. He considers the Kootenay cases “unbelievable, not forgivable.”

“I have no idea how a coroner and police officers can look at a body lying with blood all over the place and say it’s accidental. At the very least, there has to be an autopsy,” he said.

Despite the overwhelming number of deaths brought on by the overdose crisis, Campbell says, “no one is a throwaway.” Heed and Campbell both point to budgetary restrictions now more than 20 years old for B.C.’s low rate of autopsies and inquests, and both acknowledge not every death will require an autopsy or an inquest.

But the coroners service almost never conducts an inquest unless required to do so by law, and even then only years after the fact. The service held only six inquests in 2022, five of which involved deaths in police custody and one of which was a “public interest” inquest.

In 2023, the number climbed to 10, eight of which were deaths in custody.

In 2024, the number has climbed again to 14, all deaths in custody except one ordered in the public interest and the other directed by then-solicitor general Mike Farnworth into the deaths of two residents in the Winters Hotel fire in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood. The 2024 inquests include four deaths dating back to 2018 and four more from 2019.

The service will also have an inquest, ordered in June by Farnworth but as yet unscheduled, into the poisoning death of University of Victoria student Sidney McIntyre-Starko.

All in all, the BC Coroners Service has 27 inquests scheduled, according to Amber Schinkel, media relations manager. The number of cases each year is limited by the service’s own capacity, its budget and the availability of courtrooms.

“Based on a large increase in the number of police-involved deaths in 2022 and 2023,” Schinkel said an e-mailed response, “it is likely that the Coroners Service will see a significant increase in the number of inquests directed related to those years, but in each case the Chief Coroner will apply the criteria in the Coroners Act to decide whether to direct an inquest.”

Overly long inquest delays

Heed was solicitor general in 2009 when he ordered an inquest into the harrowing death of Lisa Dudley, who was believed to have survived more than 90 hours after being shot in a targeted attack in 2008. RCMP officers, investigating reports of gunshots, failed to conduct a thorough check that might have found Dudley alive days before she finally was discovered.

But Dudley’s inquest came only a decade after her death as criminal charges and inquiries into police conduct wound their way to a conclusion. Schinkel confirms that BC Coroners Service investigations may occur concurrently with police and Independent Investigations Office inquiries, but the inquest itself always comes last. “This process can take multiple years.”

Neither Heed nor Campbell believes these long delays are necessary or justified.

“It has to be emphasized that the inquest is a fact-finding, not a fault-finding, exercise,” Campbell said, recalling that he often advised police of his scheduling intentions and told them to get their work over with. “They always did.”

The Kootenay cases raise tough questions for Baidwan, who faces calls for more autopsies and inquests from multiple directions just four months after he was appointed to replace Lapointe, a harm reduction advocate who steered the BC Coroners Service from 2011 to 2024. (Baidwan declined to be interviewed for this article.)

A new report by Battered Women’s Support Services found that 20 B.C. women died in 2023 due to gender-based violence, prompting executive director Angela Marie MacDougall to call for a “coroner’s inquest for every death.”

“We want to have an investigation every time a woman is killed where a protection order or peace bond was sought or granted,” MacDougall said.

The next day, Baidwan announced an inquest will be held Jan. 13 into the 2018 death of Florence Marie Girard, 54. Girard, who had Down syndrome, died of severe malnutrition — “slowly starved to death,” in the words of a court decision — while living with Astrid Charlotte Dahl in Port Coquitlam, B.C.

Girard’s inquest was delayed for six years while Dahl was charged, tried, convicted and given a conditional sentence and then later a jail term.

Baidwan’s announcement of Girard’s inquest on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities may be a hopeful sign he is prepared to take a more activist approach to his role.

Will Samantha Sims-Somerville’s death be the subject of an inquest, now that her death has been ruled a homicide? Time will tell. Schinkel will say only that “Dr. Baidwan is confident in the approach laid out in the Coroners Act.”

Yet the act is not the issue, in the eyes of Heed, Campbell and others demanding change. They believe the problems lie in the service itself.