Use of full-body restraint while in youth detention 'left me broken,' Sask. man says
CBC
WARNING: This story contains offensive language and distressing video.
Sometime between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., Matthew Michel asked staff at the youth jail in Regina where he was being held to kill him. A motorcycle helmet encased his head and mesh straps with steel buckles and Velcro immobilized his body.
Michel's body was bound by a device called the Wrap — a series of straps binding his torso, legs and ankles, and connected to a shoulder harness to keep his body in a near-45-degree, forward-sitting position. His hands were cuffed behind his back and locked into a carabiner.
Michel, then 15, begged for death after spending two hours in the Wrap at the Paul Dojack Youth Centre, according to internal jail video and files obtained by CBC News.
"F--king strangle me," said Michel. "Kill me already. F--k."
At times, Michel gagged, wept and hyperventilated, the video shows.
Two jail staff sat on either side of him, one reading a book and drinking a juice box. Both appear impervious to his short bursts of breaths and groans of pain.
A third staff member periodically enters the frame to check on Michel's condition.
"Subject is crying, he's crying. Now, he's settling," said the third staff member, wearing dark gloves.
"I'm not f--king crying, man. I'm f--king trying to f--king suffocate myself to death," Michel says in the video, dated Aug. 17, 2010, and now made public for the first time.
At another moment shown on the video, a staff member shakes Michel by one of the straps. "No sleeping. If I'm not sleeping, you aren't sleeping."
Around 3:20 a.m., Michel, still bound, lay on his side. The helmet had now been removed and replaced with a spit hood, covering half his face.
A staff member wearing a Mötley Crüe shirt, who identified himself as a supervisor, asks Michel if he was willing to co-operate. Michel nods his head weakly. Staff remove the Wrap, shackle his ankles, cuff his now-swollen wrists and pull him up. Michel shuffles forward, his legs shaky.
"You might be a little wobbly for a bit," said the supervisor.