Ian Bush Inquest to Start Today

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 04:09 AM

The inquest into the death of Ian Bush of Houston, (shown at right) will get underway today.

It was a very long weekend for his family. They spent the weekend looking at some of the evidence that will be presented during the Coroner’s Inquest, including pictures that had been taken of Ian by the pathologist who had conducted the autopsy.

"It has been a very difficult weekend" says Ian’s sister Renee Bush. On the eve of the inquest for which they have waited more than a year and a half, the family was feeling the strain "We have feelings of extreme anxiety, we are all very emotional " said Renee.

Ian had been taken into police custody on October 29th , 2005. He was accused of obstructing justice because he had failed to give police his real name when caught with an open beer outside the Houston arena. When he was being released from custody just a few hours later, something went wrong and Ian ended up being shot to death.

The family, says Renee, doesn’t know what to expect heading into this inquest "I guesss the best we can hope for is to have some of our questions answered".

Yesterday, Opinion 250 talked with Provincial Solicitor General John Les ( see Bush Inquest under Cloud of Suspicion) who said his Ministry will monitor the inquest "It’s a very important proceeding, it has been extremely high profile, very tragic and hopefully when the inquest is done we will have more answers than we have today."

Les also agrees that inquests into events such as this, need to be held in a more timely manner "I agree that the more expeditiously these things are done, the better. In this particular case we could have done the inquest sooner, but Counsel for various parties also need to be available and that was one of the holdups we were experiencing. It has been quite a while, but at least now, the Inquest wil be underway. "

The Corner’s inquest cannot assess blame, it can only determine the cause of death, and the five member jury can make recommendations to prevent such a tragedy from recurring.

The inquest is scheduled for today, through Friday, and will reconvene July 3rd to 6th as required.

Previous Story - Next Story

Email |

Print |

Facebook |

Twitter |

Digg |

Del.icio.us

Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 04:09 AM in News by 250 News

Return to Home

Comments

Posted by: snappi on May 22 2007 8:50 AM

I'm sorry, but I just don't get this. This statement says that the inquest cannot assess blame, only determine cause of death. Everyone already knows how this poor young man died. This should not have happened at all, and of course we don't want it to happen to anyone else, so provention is great, but how can that happen when the responsible parties are not held accountable for their actions? The Bush family cannot ever have their son and brother back so where is the justice for them? I don't have much faith in this system of ours. Do you think any of this would be happening if a member had been shot and killed? Not likely, more like a quick hanging I think. My heart goes out to the Bush family and I wish them all the luck in the world.

Posted by: harry salmon on May 22 2007 9:51 AM

Actually most people don't know how he died, except that he was shot. Here's what I've heard: The cop was gonna put him in the drunk tank, there was a scuffle, Bush (who was a strong guy) got the cop in some kind of nasty hold, so the cop shot him.
I've also heard that the cop who killed him was the only one in the detachment at the time, so if that's the case then it's gonna be difficult to find out what really happened, unless they have it on video.

Posted by: Chadermando on May 22 2007 1:44 PM

The video recorder was disconnected for this altercation, which IMO is enough to send the RCMP officer to jail for manslaughter. The RCMP officer failed to do his duty to protect the public by having that camera on and as such should pay the price for his actions.

Posted by: snappi on May 22 2007 3:02 PM

I'm with you Chadermando. And strong or otherwise what ever happened to having a regular scrap? You'd think that fists or billy clubs would have worked on an impaired young guy...not to mention R.C.M.P. training. He wasn't alone in the detachment from my understanding and could have summoned help.

Posted by: lmorg on May 22 2007 4:50 PM

There is no such thing as a "regular scrap" when someone in custody decides he is going to fight it out with an armed cop. If he had been successful in chokeing out the cop, then what? We've all seen the videos of how cops have died at the hands of panicked people....cops have seen them too.....and all the training in the world goes out the window sometimes when your in an old fashioned street type brawl.