The lawyer for Rocky Lonechild, a man who suffered serious injuries during an arrest in 2019, has filed a Statement of Claim in Queen’s Bench Court.
The claim names the Regina Police Officer who inflicted Lonechild’s injuries, the Regina Board of Police Commissioners, as well as the three attending EMS personnel and the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
Dan LeBlanc says it’s up to the courts to decide whether or not what happened to Lonechild is right or wrong.
“We’re calling on Saskatchewan Court, at trial, to determine whether what happened is legal,” said LeBlanc. “More pressingly, we’re calling on the Saskatchewan public to watch the video and decide whether what happened should be illegal. We say, if what happened isn’t police misconduct that’s illegal, nothing is.”
Lonechild was arrested on December 13th, 2019 after allegedly being a suspect in a home invasion. He sustained broken ribs and a punctured lung. It’s alleged that while being treated by EMS, Lonechild was placed in a position that made his breathing more difficult, and despite being notified of that, EMS did nothing.
LeBlanc says they are named in the claim because they failed to do their jobs that night.
“Their responsibility on that day was to help Rocky as their patient, rather than to treat him as their prisoner in their custody,” said LeBlanc. “In that moment, they behaved like police rather than paramedics. They forgot that their role in this scenario is to help people.”
LeBlanc hopes the Court decides the incident was illegal, and some real change can come out of it.
“We say Rocky did not deserve this, and nobody deserves this to happen to them,” said LeBlanc. “So this legal action is a claim, both for justice for Rocky and also justice in Saskatchewan. It says government institutions can’t treat people this way.”