Only 1 piece of evidence linked Colton Clarkin with suicide before his 2023 death, inquest hears

Warning: This story deals with suicide. If you or someone you know has been struggling with mental health, you can find resources for help at the bottom of this story.

Testimony wrapped up Friday at the coroner's inquest into the death of Colton Clarkin in July 2023, but the process will now stretch into an unplanned fourth day on Monday.

Clarkin died by suicide after fleeing the Hillsborough Hospital grounds while walking there with his father. He was in the Charlottetown facility as an involuntary patient under an order from the province's Criminal Code Review Board, despite the psychiatric hospital team believing he was not a good fit for their facility.

On Friday the inquest jurors heard the only piece of evidence that linked the 27-year-old Emyvale man with suicide before his death: a checkbox on an admission form.

A month before his death in July, Clarkin checked "yes" when answering the question: "Have you attempted to kill yourself in the past?" That was during the intake process for the Transition Unit at the Provincial Addictions Treatment Facility in Mount Herbert, north of Stratford.

The inquest heard that he had checked "no" when filling out the same form earlier that year, but the manager of transitional programs working out of Mount Herbert testified Friday that the change in response was not flagged.

There was no software to do so automatically, and the priority was to screen people for current thoughts of suicide. There was a box on the form for that too, and Clarkin responded "no" to it each time he did the paperwork.

The manager told the jurors that addiction treatment staff like himself were able to read Hillsborough Hospital files and could see the case notes for Clarkin.

But that access did not go both ways, so staff at Hillsborough Hospital would not have seen that checked box about a previous suicide attempt, unless it was brought to their attention.

On Thursday, the psychiatrist who treated Clarkin throughout his 10-month stay at Hillsborough told the inquest he was 'flabberghasted' to hear his patient had died by suicide.

Clarkin had never expressed thoughts of suicide to that team — a sentiment echoed by Clarkin's addictions counsellor on Friday.

"He was funny, he was smart, he was always helpful," Kristine Sutherland said during her testimony, speaking directly to Clarkin's family, seated in the front row of the Charlottetown courthouse. "My time with Colton was very positive."

Sutherland was the last addictions counsellor to work with Clarkin, seeing him one-on-one from April 2023 until his death that July. She told the inquest that they connected, which she thought would help engage him in his recovery process.

She described Clarkin as someone who was starting to see how his drug use had negatively impacted his life, and was coming to understand that sobriety and treatment were his way out of the hospital, not the disruptive behaviour and escapes that had marked his stay to that point.