Cheryl Ann Cowan lived her life as a teacher, wife of a partner in one of Vancouver’s most prestigious law firms, mother, homeowner and more recently single wealthy apartment dweller.
But her life ended two years ago, days after she was found slumped over in the back of a police paddy wagon on her way to Vancouver’s jail, still drunk and still handcuffed. She had been arrested for breaking into her estranged husband’s West Side home 10 days before Christmas 2013.
A coroner’s inquest into her death while in police custody revealed sketchy details into her spiral from teacher and family member to homeless petty criminal, apparently because of untreated alcoholism.
Cowan, 58, died on Dec. 23, 2013, eight days after she suffered a heart attack in the back of the wagon, which deprived her brain of oxygen and required her to remain on advanced life support until she passed away. Her sons said their goodbyes to her while she was in an induced coma.
“Toxicology reports indicate the affected person was likely impaired at the time of her arrest,” said the Independent Investigation Office report into the incident that cleared the paddy-wagon driver, police Const. Neal Carswell, of any wrongdoing.
The B.C. Coroner’s Office announced after the report by the IIO that it would conduct the inquest because the death occurred while Cowan was in police custody. The jury may make recommendations to prevent similar deaths in future, but not find fault.
David Cowan, from whom Cheryl separated in 2003, told the inquiry Monday that he and his partner called the cops after finding Cowan lying on the couch in their Dunbar home at 6 a.m. on Dec. 15, 2013. It was her second visit in four days.
He physically escorted her out and she continued to bang on the door. She was surrounded by bags of her belongings, cigarette butts and empty wine bottles and “she seemed to have taken up residence in our carport,” Cowan told the jury.
He and the officers agreed she appeared intoxicated and the inquest heard she was threatening to smash the glass door and insisted she lived there.
David Cowan said he and other family members had tried unsuccessfully to get her into alcohol treatment.
In September 2013, she had been evicted from her apartment, and David and his brother had helped her remove her belongings. He said she had after that lived in hotels, including the luxurious Wedgewood in Vancouver, bankrolled by the $500,000 in proceeds from the sale of their matrimonial home.
When she was arrested for the last time, she had on her $134 in cash, a cellphone and various bank cards.
But the inquest also heard she had told an officer she was sleeping in coffee shops and that one officer attended to a call about Cowan, bleeding from her face, at the Starbucks on Cornwall Avenue near Kitsilano Beach.
Another said he had responded in past weeks to a call from her ex-landlord because she refused to leave the property of her former South Granville apartment, insisting she still lived there.
“She was extremely, extremely intoxicated,” testified police Sgt. Al Kumiss.
The inquest also heard how she walked into the paddy wagon on her own during her last arrest at 6:55 a.m. and when Carswell opened the door 48 minutes later, at7:43 a.m., at the jail, she was unresponsive.
On a video shown to the jury, Carswell, guards, two nurses, a doctor and others are seen tending to her, but no one tried CPR or used the defibrillator on her until the paramedics arrived minutes later.
The inquest heard the jail doctor declined a nurse’s offer to start CPR, despite the lack of a pulse, her fixed stare and blue lips, telling her “she’s gone.”
Paramedics resuscitated her, but she never fully recovered.
The doctor and the paramedics are scheduled to testify Tuesday.
