Stabbing victim, 25, attacked over cigarettes -AB
Ben Gelinas, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Tuesday, November 11
EDMONTON - Family have identified Andrew Stephen Frang as the city's latest homicide victim, the second man stabbed to death in unrelated weekend fights.
Frang, 25, was stabbed after he and his girlfriend refused to give cigarettes to two strangers who approached them on 118th Avenue near 124th Street, Frang's father said.
While walking to the Inglewood Royal Pizza just after midnight Sunday, the couple was confronted by two men, Douglas Frang said.
The men asked for cigarettes. The couple refused, and the men attacked Frang, his father said.
"One of them punched him and threw him on the ground, and then a fight started, and another one came around and stabbed him."
When police arrived, Frang was bleeding on the steps outside the Liquor Time corner store. The two men had run off. The weapon was gone.
Frang was taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police think the attack was random.
"He was happy and he was full of life," Douglas Frang said. "It's just devastating to lose him."
His son worked odd jobs but mainly installed garage doors. He had many friends and a large family.
"There are so many memories," Douglas Frang said. "We had good times and we had bad times, but more good than anything."
Police hope surveillance cameras positioned in the neighbourhood may have caught the attack or the aftermath. They are still looking for the attackers.
One was described as thin, about five-foot-six and 16 to 20 years old. The second man looked a older and a little taller, police said.
An autopsy will be conducted. Frang was the 28th person murdered in Edmonton this year.
The city's 27th homicide victim Quentin Edward L'hirondelle was stabbed and bled to death Saturday morning after a fight at a downtown party, an autopsy confirmed Monday.
Police said at least 10 people were at the party when a fight broke out around 8 a.m in a third-floor suite of an apartment building at 10617 107th Street. A number of people were taken to hospital.
L'hirondelle, 22, knew the two men charged in connection with his death, police said.
Justin Malcolm Sutherland, 21, has been charged with second-degree murder. Jimmy Billy Crow Shoe, 22, was charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.
Police continue to investigate.
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Supervision questioned after nursing home death -MB
January 11, 2008
By SHANNON VANRAES, SUN MEDIA
WINNIPEG -- A woman is looking for answers after her mentally challenged brother- in-law was found dead in the courtyard of a supervised residency.
"It was terrible, I still can't believe it," said Ann Collen. "I have no idea exactly what happened."
What she does know is the body of her 74-year-old relative, Barry Collen, was found in the courtyard of The Kanee Centre at The Sharon Home in north Winnipeg early Jan. 2, several hours after he entered the area to have a cigarette.
Collen thinks the elderly man may have frozen to death after being unable to reopen the door to the facility, but noted the chief medical examiner's office is investigating.
"They should have checked in on him," said Collen, who questions why it took so long to find Barry, regardless of the cause of death.
She said although Barry was able to do many things on his own, he suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome, which makes it difficult to feel numbness or the cold. It also affected his balance, and made it very difficult for him to use buttons or zippers. Because of those facts, Collen felt he should have been frequently checked on during cold weather.
She was further frustrated by the fact her brother-in-law was smoking outdoors, because the facility has a smoking room.
"He was banned from the smoking room, for smoking too much," Collen said, adding she hasn't been satisfied with the information she received from Sharon Home since Barry's death. He had been living at the centre since 2004.
The Winnipeg Police Service did investigate the incident, but ruled out any suspicious causes of death.
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority is looking into the matter, but doesn't believe Barry was somehow locked outside.
"We are investigating the cause of death, but the door had a code ... and he had the code," said WRHA spokeswoman Heidi Graham, adding the code was needed to enter the courtyard, not exit it.
Sandra Delorme, Sharon Home president and CEO, didn't respond to calls. She previously told the Winnipeg-based Jewish Post and News that Barry was competent enough to head outside for a smoke.
She added staff wasn't alarmed when he didn't return to his room because he liked to wander throughout the building.
Collen said she has had concerns about how Sharon Home treats clients in the past, but said people need to be vigilant when it comes to the safety of loved ones. Now she's urging others to take a closer look at care homes while continuing to search for closure in Barry's death.
Collen is his only surviving relative. "It could happen at any nursing home ... people should be aware of their mothers and fathers and check on them," she said.
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Police, hospital searched for missing patient found dead
January 3, 2008
SKANA GEE
The events leading up to William Joseph Leblanc's death on hospital grounds over the holidays may remain a mystery, according to a QEII Health Sciences Centre spokesman.
"It certainly is very unfortunate. However, we don't have all of the information yet. And the reality is that no one might have all of the information. It may be one of those things where there will always be gaps in our understanding of it," Peter Graham told The Daily News yesterday.
Leblanc, 65, was last seen leaving the Halifax Infirmary site on Christmas Day at about 2 p.m., wearing only a johnny shirt and work boots.
The body of the slim, grey-haired Halifax senior was found five days later, on Dec. 30.
An autopsy is being conducted, but foul play is not suspected.
Leblanc was a patient at the Summer Street emergency department, Graham said, although he couldn't release further medical details.
Worried staff
"At some point he left, without communicating with anyone working there. When staff noticed he had left, they were sufficiently concerned about him that they called police," he said.
"It's not unheard of that people leave the emergency department ... they're tired of waiting or they don't like what they're being told, or they're frustrated, or they didn't want to come in the first place," he said. "Adults are allowed to make that decision."
Police immediately began looking for Leblanc, although they did not issue a public plea for assistance until Dec. 28, when Leblanc's family reported him missing.
They didn't search hospital grounds, said Halifax Regional Police spokeswoman Theresa Rath.
"We would automatically go check their residence, speak to their family, their friends, go to areas they were known to frequent," she explained.
"We conducted a thorough missing-persons file."
Leblanc's body - still clad in johnny shirt and boots - was found on Dec. 30 at about 1:25 p.m., after a female visitor to the hospital spotted it from a window.
"We don't know how long he was there, and we may never know," Rath said.
Hospital staff searched the grounds after the missing-person report was filed, said Graham, and the area was patrolled regularly, anyway.
It's unclear how those patrols failed to turn up Leblanc, except that he was found in an out-of-the-way inner courtyard that's obscured by generators.
"We will be doing a review ourselves of our policies and procedures," Graham said.
"When there is an incident, whether it is a patient complaint or a death, we do look at things from the perspective of how did our policies and procedures work?"
The review, conducted by an in-house quality team, likely won't be made public. But Graham said officials have offered Leblanc's next of kin access to its findings.
Previous disappearance
On Jan. 28, 2006, Marilyn Ann Hersey disappeared after checking into the Abbey J. Lane Hospital suffering from bipolar disorder.
The 62-year-old woman walked out of the hospital, ostensibly to smoke a cigarette, and was never seen again.
At the time, a Capital Health spokesman said a review of procedures found "there wasn't anything in her practice or care that would suggest changes to policies."
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Review set in death of ER patient
Family, friends question how hospital could lose track of man
By DAN ARSENAULT Crime Reporter
Jan 2, 2008
Although it plans to review its process in light of the death of a man who walked out of an emergency room, the Capital district health authority admits it may never find out exactly what happened to Bill Leblanc.
Mr. Leblanc, 65, went to the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax on Christmas Day, but then walked out dressed in a johnny shirt and workboots at 2 p.m.
The hospital did a search of the area and later contacted police, who issued a news release three days later seeking help to find him.
A patient in the hospital noticed Mr. Leblanc’s body in the snow at 1:20 p.m. Sunday, five days after he was seen walking out of the building.
An autopsy is being done but officials haven’t said how the man died.
Barbara Hall, vice-president of community care for the Capital district, said Monday that a review will try to track all of Mr. Leblanc’s movements and will include interviews with people who came into contact with him.
"We’ll look at the entire incident," she said Tuesday. "He left voluntarily on Dec. 25 and was found yesterday. We have no idea what happened in the meantime.
"All we know is he left and he didn’t tell anybody. As you can appreciate, (in) the emergency department, people are coming and going all the time. They’re adults, they come in and they leave. That might happen without too much concern on the staff’s part.
Deborah Grant, one of Mr. Leblanc’s two stepdaughters, said she had little contact with him in the last 15 years and she doesn’t know why he went to the hospital.
"It’s a very sad time for his family," she said. "I know they’re extremely upset with the passing of Bill."
Mr. Leblanc always lived in the Halifax area. He was married twice and fathered two sons and had two other stepsons. He may have been living on a disability allowance for about 15 years, Ms. Grant said.
She doesn’t want to blame anyone specifically but thinks the hospital staff, commissionaires and police were all at fault, "a little bit in their own way."
"I know that people leave the hospital to have a cigarette," she said. "That part I can understand.
"I think the fact that he didn’t return and they knew he left in a johnny shirt and a pair of boots should have caused a lot more concern."
Considering the cold weather, there should have been more effort to find him, she said.
Rose MacDonald, who works at the Robins Donuts shop on North Street, said she’ll miss Mr. Leblanc, who spent a lot of time there.
"He’s been coming to my store at 5:30 every morning," she said. "He gets a large double-double and is very pleasant."
She said it was nothing for Mr. Leblanc to stay at the shop until 8 p.m.
"He’d have coffee, then he’d have a tea and then he’ll go to a pop. Then he’ll say, ‘I’ll have one of your sandwiches.’ He loved sandwiches."
She said he lived in a nearby rooming house and no one in the shop minded how much time he spent there.
She thinks the hospital did a poor job of looking out for her friend. "I heard that he went out for a cigarette and that was the end of it," she said.
"If I was there and I knew he was going out for a smoke, I’d have been tagging along behind him."
Quebec's workplace safety board and the provincial police are investigating a fatal accident involving a smoking shelter that collapsed outside a factory in Granby, killing a man.
The Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail and the Sûreté du Québec are looking into the incident that killed the man at the Transformateur Delta plant on Industrial Blvd. on Thursday morning.
The victim and two co-workers were standing inside the small shelter on a morning cigarette break when it apparently collapsed under the weight of the snow that had piled up on the roof.
Two of the workers managed to free themselves, but their colleague, Eric Whitehouse, 34, was trapped against a table for 40 minutes and died of a heart attack.
