WARNING: This story contains references to suicide.
It took more than six hours for military police to conduct a wellness check on a defence intelligence analyst in Ottawa after his wife called them because she was concerned for his safety, according to newly disclosed evidence.
The 2024 death by suicide of Master Cpl. Shaun Orton is at the centre of a rare public hearing by Canada’s military police watchdog.
The Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC) is probing the matter because of the severity of the allegations, and the potential systemic issues surrounding the way military police respond to mental health calls.
Military police did not perform CPR on Orton when they arrived and found him hanging, believing it was too late to help, according to testimony at the hearing.
Ottawa police arrived 10 minutes later and tried to resuscitate him, but Orton was later pronounced dead at hospital.
Orton’s wife, Sarah, alleges there was an unreasonable delay and an inadequate response by military police.
Her lawyer, Catherine Christensen, told the MPCC hearing there is a military police order that states unless “death is clearly evident,” they must try to save the person’s life.
“Preservation of life is the first priority,” Christensen said on April 20. “Members must assume the victim is alive and make all efforts to preserve life.
“The MPs on the scene knew these orders. They violated them.”
A lawyer representing a military police sergeant involved said his response was “based on the institutional structure available to him.” He described systemic issues, including being short-staffed and old and unclear directives on wellness checks.
It’s up to the military watchdog to decide if misconduct occurred, and to make recommendations to improve military policing in Canada.
Worried wife requested wellness check
Newly released transcripts of calls show Sarah Orton called military police just after 9 a.m. on April 21, 2024, asking them to conduct a wellness check on her husband. She said she had received numerous messages from him overnight that indicated he was “spiralling out of control and needing help.”
“And now he’s not answering, and I’m just wondering if somebody could do a mental health check on him,” she told Sgt. Mathew Young, according to a transcript of the call.
Sarah Orton had moved out of town during a trial separation but testified that she remained in regular contact with her husband.
On April 21, she told Young it had been two hours since her husband had responded to her messages, and he had also failed to answer a dozen phone calls, according to a transcript of her call to military police.
Young, who knew Shaun Orton, asked if he’d mentioned wanting to hurt himself. Otherwise, he said he wouldn’t normally respond.
“So what we typically do, unless … this person is saying that they’re going to harm themselves, that they have a plan to harm themselves, MPs don’t typically respond,” Young said.
Young gave Sarah Orton a number for her husband’s unit and said they would be the ones to check on him, according to the call transcript. But when she called, it went straight to voicemail because it was the weekend. Nor could she reach anyone at any of the other numbers she tried.
Sarah Orton told the hearing she eventually called civilian authorities for help.
Just before 2 p.m. that same day, Ottawa police Const. Parsons called Young to ask why he wasn’t doing the wellness check, according to a transcript of that call. Parsons noted that Shaun Orton had a lot of past trauma.
Young told Parsons he knew Shaun Orton and that they only had two officers on duty covering the entire National Capital Region, “so we’re very limited,” according to the call transcript.
Parsons said police were “definitely concerned,” and a crisis worker who was by then involved in the case wanted to “go out and do a door knock.”
‘This actually is a situation’
Sarah Orton called Young back at 2:46 p.m. and said Ottawa police had told her to remind Young that “this actually is a situation,” the call transcript said.
She told him about similar texts Shaun Orton had sent around the time of a previous suicide attempt in 2019, and how worried she was.
“This is not my first rodeo when it comes to suicide in the military, and I’ve been 15 years through this and I do have a concern for his health and wellness right now,” she said.
After putting her on hold, Young agreed to go check on her husband, but repeated that military police protocol was to stay away unless the individual says “I’m going to harm myself or I’m going to harm somebody else.”
“I just want to know he’s OK,” Sarah Orton cried.
Young arrived at Shaun Orton’s residence and found him hanging at 3:33 p.m. — about six and a half hours after his wife’s first call to military police, according to evidence from the hearing.
Young testified he thought it was too late to perform CPR. He noted Shaun Orton’s body was still warm but had no pulse.
According to a summary of Young’s prehearing interview, he knew purple hands and feet were a sign of death because he had learned about it “watching true crime and researching on the internet.” Asked about that during the hearing, Young said he can’t remember where exactly he got this information.
Young testified that Ottawa police arrived 10 minutes after he found Orton. He said they also found the body was warm to the touch and decided to perform CPR.
Orton was pronounced dead at hospital around 5 p.m., records show.
Young testified that a military police order regarding sudden death investigations stated a body shouldn’t be moved except to check for a pulse, in order to preserve the scene.
Young’s lawyer, Phillip Millar, also said his client’s initial decision not to do the wellness check and direct her to what he understood was the proper support channel was reasonable, based on the information he had at the time. “The evidence will show Sgt Young then directing Mrs. Orton toward what he understood to be the proper support channel, the Transition Unit.”
Later, when military police learned about Orton’s previous suicide attempt and that civilian authorities hadn’t been able to reach him, the assessment changed, Millar said.
“The information then included the prior suicide attempt history and more acute language suggesting a serious and immediate crisis,” Millar told the hearing on April 20.
Millar said the evidence during the hearing will show Young was operating in an environment that was understaffed and had unclear and outdated verbal guidance about wellness checks.
Young testified that he had been verbally directed when they had just two members working to only respond to emergencies and defer other calls to the next day when more people were working.
“The CAF had broader mental health and transition structures for a reason, and those structures were supposed to prevent a patrol officer on a weekend shift from becoming the final safety net for a complex, long-running mental health crisis,” Millar said.
The MPCC’s hearing is scheduled to run until May 15.
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