A Coroner’s Inquest, Critical To Niagara’s Hospital Services, Is Now Underway

By Doug Draper

Did Niagara’s paramedics do enough, and did they do it fast enough, at the scene of a car crash to save Reilly Anzovino life? And would the Fort Erie, Ontario teen still be alive today if the Niagara Health System had not closed the emergency rooms at hospitals in Fort Erie and neighbouring Port Colborne?

That last question, in particular, is the one that has haunted Reilly Anzovino’s family and many residents in the south end of Niagara for the better part of two years.  And it is a major focus of an Ontario coroner’s inquest that got underway in a Welland courtroom this October 31.

Hopefully this inquest, ordered by the province’s chief coroner, Dr. Andrew McCallum, less than four months after Reilly’s death in the wee small hours of December 27, 2009, will get to the bottom of that question and will result in recommendations that reduce the chances that families in this region will ever have to suffer a similar tragedy.
Denise Kennedy, Reilly’s mother, put it this way during an interview with Niagara At Large after Dr. McCallum said ‘yes’ to an inquest more than a year ago. She said she knows “nothing will bring Reilly back.” Yet she and her family “hopes that this inquest will bring recommendations and changes to the health care of our community.” During a brief meeting with member of the media in front of the Welland court building this October 31, Wayne Redekop, a lawyer and former Fort Erie mayor representing Reilly’s family during the inquest, repeated that view on behalf of the family and went all the to say that all the Anzovinos want is a fair, open and thorough investigation of the circumstances around the tragedy.

The inquest began with Michael Blaine, a lawyer from the coroner’s office, providing an overview of what occurred from the time of a head-on collision at 11:27 p.m. on December 26, 2009, with Reilly, as front-seat passenger in one of the cars, to the time she was pronounced dead at the Welland hospital at 1:21 a.m. on December 27.

In between that time, Blaine described circumstances following an accident that occurred on a foggy, icy patch of Highway 3 in Fort Erie and about mid-way between the two hospital sites in Fort Erie and Port Colborne where, earlier that year, the Niagara Health System (the NHS board responsible for operating most hospital services in the Niagara region for the past decade) converted the emergency rooms to “urgent care centres” where the most critical patients, suffering life-threatening traumas, could no longer go.

According to Blaine’s overview, the ambulance attending to Reilly remained at the accident scene from about 11:40 on December 26 until it left the scene at 12:08 on December 27 – a period of some 28 minutes. It took another 20 minutes to arrive at the Welland hospital. During all of the time, Reilly’s vital signs went from being very weak immediately following the crash to improving significant during the journey to the Welland hospital site, to rapidly declining upon arrival. Blaine noted that there was evidence that her abdomen was swelling with bodily fluids, probably from internal bleeding, and that things went rapidly downhill from there. By the early morning hours there were no vital signs left and she was pronounced dead.

One of the questions so many have asked, including members of Reilly’s family and the larger Niagara community, is could Reilly, who regained consciousness and seemed to be rallying during her journey to the Welland hospital site, be saved if she was able to take a shorter trip to either the Fort Erie or Port Colborne hospitals? Could personal at either of those sites, even if they were not longer officially designated by the Niagara Health System as having emergency rooms for receiving serious trauma cases like this, be able to at least sustain her enough – in this case arrest the internal bleeding – to keep her alive until she got to another hospital site for surgery?

These are key questions many in south Niagara, opposed to the NHS’s closing of the emergency rooms in their communities, hope will be addressed through this inquiry.

Dr.  Jack Stanborough, the presiding coroner at the inquiry, made it clear that the proceeding are not about “pointing fingers or laying blame.” They are about probing this strategy well enough to come up with recommendations to help make sure another one like it doesn’t happen again.

On the first day of the inquiry, among the first witnesses who testified was Molly Fairgrieve, who introduced herself as Reilly’s “best friend” and who was driving the car west on Highway 3 that Boxing Day night when it spun out of control on the black ice.

Molly said she could hardly recall anything after the crash. Among the few exceptions was having Reilly “leaning on me,” making a “humming” sound with her eyes closed. That was about the last memory she confessed having of her friend before she was ambulanced off to Welland, and she said under questioning that she had nothing to drink that evening.

At one point during her time on the witness stand, Molly reached for a box of tissues to wipe away tears after viewing pictures of the crash site.

Unfortunately, Niagara At Large cannot cover this inquest gavel to gavel for the full two to four weeks. We simply do not have the resources as a fledgling news site to do that unless someone wants to come forward with a generous grant. However, we will be monitoring the inquest’s progress through other reliable sources and will make every attempt to be there at key moments.

In the meantime, NAL wishes the Anzovino family all the strength in the world as they live through this family tragedy again. Having met members of this family and talked to them on a number of occasions, I cannot help but respect the strength and the class they have shown over the past 22 months. It is truly inspiring.

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