The Abdirahman Abdi inquest is being livestreamed during the day here.
The Ottawa paramedic who treated Abdirahman Abdi in the aftermath of his violent altercation with two police officers says he doesn’t recall police telling him about the head blows one of the officers had delivered to Abdi that morning.
Alexander Bain’s testimony on Wednesday came during Day 8 of a coroner’s inquest into Abdi’s death in hospital on July 25, 2016, one day after his arrest.
It echoed testimony earlier this week by Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, who said he did not recall learning from police about any physical interaction aside from the use of pepper spray, resulting in a lack of clarity about the circumstances that had brought Abdi to hospital.
Kyeremanteng said he learned about the physical confrontation from Abdi’s family.
What he learned from officers
Bain said he and his partner got the call to go to 55 Hilda St., Abdi’s apartment building, at 9:50 a.m. on July 24, 2016.
The central ambulance call communication centre told them a middle-aged man had been pepper-sprayed and was unconscious. That latter detail marked it as a serious call, Bain said.
The call centre indicated Abdi had been pepper-sprayed in the face and hit with a baton in the lower leg, dropping him to the ground.
When he arrived at the scene, Bain was told by a police sergeant who’d approached the ambulance that Abdi was in custody and that he’d been groping women at a local coffee shop. The sergeant told Bain there’d been a foot chase and Abdi had been pepper-spray, struck in the lower leg with a baton and brought down to the ground.
Bain then approached Abdi and said Const. Daniel Montsion, who was kneeling over the man, gave him a similar account.
“I asked, or he just told me, what had happened,” Bain said. “That [Abdi] was brought down, there was a foot chase, they were chasing him, he was groping women. That [they] pepper sprayed and hit him with a baton in the lower leg and brought him down to the ground.”
Bain was asked if he received “any information about major trauma,” to which he answered “no.”
“He never informed you that Mr. Abdi had been punched in the head several times?” an Abdi family lawyer asked about the sergeant’s initial report.
“Correct,” Bain replied.
Bain provided the same information to hospital staff, he said.
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WARNING: This video contains graphic content | Eight years after Abdirahman Abdi died following a violent struggle with Ottawa police, a coroner’s inquest is bringing the event back into the spotlight. Here’s what you need to know.
The inquest is not a legal process and no one is on trial. Montsion, who delivered the head blows as he and Const. David Weir tried to get Abdi handcuffed, was already acquitted of manslaughter after a trial that concluded in 2020. Abdi’s family settled a lawsuit with police later that year.
Lawyers at the inquest are asking a wide range of questions because its core goal is to gather information to empower a jury of five people to recommend solutions to prevent deaths like Abdi’s in the future.
‘A very distracting scene’
The inquest has so far painted a picture of a highly fraught scene after Abdi was placed in handcuffs.
Bain added to that portrait on Wednesday, noting both a large crowd that had amassed on the opposite side of the street and officers holding closed the front door of the building as some of Abdi’s relatives watched the scene unfold from the vestibule.
Bystanders were taking videos and yelling things like, “He’s dead! You killed him!” Bain recalled. One man got too close and had to be asked to move, Bain said.
Asked if he had difficulty caring for Abdi in that environment, Bain said it did not interfere with his work but that it was a “a very distracting scene,” echoing the testimony of Montsion and Weir.
“There was a lot of chaos and hostility in the environment during the call,” Bain said.
Under cross examination by a lawyer for Montsion and Weir, Bain said there’s a chance Montsion told him things he didn’t hear or couldn’t process in the moment.
“It could have happened, yes,” Bain said.
“I believe I would have remembered if I did hear it,” he added later when being reexamined by inquest lawyer Maria Stevens.
