'How does something like this happen?': Soleiman Faqiri calm, cooperative before violent restraint, nurse says

As Soleiman Faqiri's body lay on a jail cell floor, nurse Cathy Goard pleaded with a paramedic to do one final round of chest compressions, hoping against hope that he might be revived.

"I'm begging you with my life for his mother and father," she told the paramedic.  

Goard, a health care manager at the Central East Correction Centre, knew by then there was no bringing the 30-year-old back. Still, the memory of speaking to his family and their belief that their son would get the help he needed if arrested, meant she had to try everything for her conscience.

"I was praying for this man's life," she said.

Jurors at the inquest for Faqiri heard audio of the nurse's interview, given as part of an internal investigation by the jail five months after Faqiri's Dec. 15, 2016 death. Goard herself was not present at the inquest Thursday.

During the approximately 90-minute long recording, Goard told the interviewer that Faqiri had been calm, compliant and attentive in the hours before he was violently restrained by guards.

Goard had been off work for several days and said she assessed Faqiri in person on Dec. 13. By that point, a doctor inside the jail had ordered that he be moved to a segregation unit for further monitoring, and Goard wanted to see for herself if he could feasibly be moved.

WATCH | Guard's video captures Soleiman Faqiri's condition days before his death:

The interviewer said part of the review involved asking why Faqiri hadn't simply be sent to the hospital given his condition. Goard replied that there had been problems with doing so in the past, with people taken there quickly being sent back.

Given Faqiri was in the throes of a mental health "emergency" prior to his death, he should have nevertheless been taken to a hospital, a forensic psychiatrist said Wednesday during his expert testimony.

Goard said she felt Faqiri was cooperative, maintained good eye contact, and that a transfer to the maximum segregation unit would be possible. The plan was to get him into a wheelchair, cover him with a sheet, get him into the shower and then into his cell.

Faqiri seemed to respond well when told of the plan, and told he would be given a Qur'an and food after the move.

Sometime after 1 p.m. on Dec. 15 — the day that would Faqiri's last — staff moved him as planned to the segregation unit known as 8-seg. Nearby inmates were asked to be quiet, staff were asked to give clear, short instructions and to engage Faqiri calmly, Goard said, and "everything was going according to plan."

Upstairs in 8-seg, however, correctional officers weren't happy to hear about the new arrival.