Inquests called into inmate deaths, including Brandon man’s

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/07/2025 (255 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Brandon man who died while in custody five years ago is one of the seven men whose deaths are being investigated.

Patrick Eaglestick was 25 years old when he was found hanging in his cell at Stony Mountain Institution during a routine check on March 23, 2020, the chief medical examiner’s office said in a news release on Monday.

Officers and emergency medical services tried to resuscitate Eaglestick and transported him to the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, the release said.

“A CT scan at HSC demonstrated changes consistent with severe anoxic brain injury. Care was withdrawn, and he died shortly afterward on March 24, 2020,” the release said.

The immediate cause of death was determined to be hanging, and the manner of death was suicide.

Eaglestick was sentenced to five years in prison in Brandon Court of Queen’s Bench after he was an accomplice in a robbery that left a man dead.

Eaglestick pleaded guilty to the charge but maintained that he never touched the victim.

Eaglestick, along with two co-accused, met Aaron Daniel Jardine in August 2013. The four men were drinking together when Jardine invited them back to his apartment to keep drinking.

The men then robbed him.

Eaglestick said he looked for money, but it was one of the co-accused who threw the victim to the floor and used a cord to tie his hands.

He told the court that the co-accused stabbed Jardine in the stomach with a knife and stomped on his head.

Eaglestick said he told him to stop, but when the co-accused got angry at him, he left.

Police later found Jardine’s body in his suite at the Community Welcome Clubhouse, a home that provided semi-independent living for people with mental health challenges. Jardine was schizophrenic.

Curt Harper, Owen Melvis, Farron Rowan and Adrian Young, who were all inmates at Stony Mountain Institution, were found on separate occasions hanging in their cells in 2020.

The medical examiner deemed their deaths suicides.

Jesse Thomas’ immediate cause of death was determined to be toxic effects of fentanyl and flualprazolam and the manner was accidental, the news release said. He was also an inmate at Stony Mountain Institution.

“(Thomas) was found unresponsive and alone in his locked cell approximately 30 minutes after he was observed to be asleep and snoring during routine rounds on November 19, 2021. All efforts at resuscitation were unsuccessful,” the release said.

All the men’s deaths are being investigated because they were in custody at the time.

The inquest will also try to determine the circumstances regarding the death of Headingley Correctional Centre inmate William Ahmo in 2021.

He died in the hospital on Feb. 14. The Sagkeeng First Nation man was shackled, pinned to the ground, had a hood pulled over his head and was strapped into a restraint chair in the common area of his unit after a standoff with jail guards.

The chief medical examiner deemed the death a homicide. Ahmo, 45, died from a brain injury caused by a heart attack as he struggled to breathe, court heard at the trial of Robert Jeffrey Morden.

Morden, who led the tactical team that responded to the standoff, pleaded not guilty to criminal negligence causing death and failing to provide the necessities of life. He was acquitted last September.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of Ahmo’s mother in February 2023 alleges the provincial government and jail guards were negligent and breached their duty of care for the inmate, among other claims of mistreatment and racism. The government has yet to respond in civil court.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com, with files from the Winnipeg Free Press