Coroner’s Inquest Is On Again

By Doug Draper

A provincial inquest into the circumstances around the death of Fort Erie teen Reilly Anzovino will continue in a Welland courtroom this coming Monday, December 5.

The high-profile inquest, which began early this November, has been adjourned twice while the family of Reilly asked for time for a new lawyer, Maureen Currie, to study the circumstances of her death following a traffic accident in the late hours of December 26, 2009.

The inquest was called by Ontario’s Chief Coroner’s office in the wake of questions from the Anzovino family and many others in the south end of Niagara whether 18-year-old Reilly would still be alive if the Niagara Health System – the body responsible for managing most of the hospital services in the region – had not closed the emergency rooms in Reilly’s hometown of Fort Erie and in nearby Port Colborne earlier that year. Reilly was pronounced dead in the early hours of December 27, 2009 following a longer trip to the emergency room at NHS’s Welland hospital site.
The decision to reconvene the inquest in to this tragic death, following the Anzonvino’s decision earlier this week to dismiss their lawyer Wayne Redekop, comes awfully fast after all of that.

One cannot help but wonder if the new lawyer has had the time she needs to prepare for a case that is quite complex, given all of the emergency response and medical issues that need addressing. Those on the other side of this case, the Niagara Health System, Niagara’s regional government representing its ambulances staff and others, have had the better part of a year to engage lawyers to defend their interests in this inquest.

What should be of utmost concern for anyone interested in seeing a fair and balanced hearing here is, will the victims of the tragedy have legal representation that has had enough time to put forward all of the questions that need to be asked.

Denise Kennedy, Reilly’s mother, told NAL earlier this year that she hopes to see decisions coming out of this inquest that help prevent other families from going through the same pain and suffering her family has with the death of a daughter that may have been saved if an emergency room was closer at hand.

Let’s all hope so. This inquest should be about getting to the bottom of what may have gone wrong in saving the life of Reilly Anzovino. It should certainly not be about reconvening the inquest as soon as possible and rushing to judgement just to get it over with. That would be miscarriage of justice that none of this in this Niagara community should take sitting down.

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