Widow tells police conduct hearing about Tyler Knockwood’s behaviour prior to his death

Warning: This story deals with serious mental health concerns and suicide. Resources and supports can be found at the bottom of this story.

The widow of a 34-year-old Indigenous man who took his own life at Province House in 2023 described her husband’s erratic behaviour in the days leading up to his death at a police conduct hearing on Monday.

The public hearing, believed to be the first of its kind in P.E.I., is looking into whether the six Charlottetown Police Services officers who interacted with Tyler Knockwood before he died neglected their duty.

Knockwood died in January 2023 at the historic seat of the P.E.I. Legislature in downtown Charlottetown, where he’d been part of the team working to restore the building. 

Charlottetown police were called to the house on three separate occasions in the 24 hours before Knockwood took his own life. After the third visit, officers dropped him off downtown. Knockwood was found dead early the next morning.

Asha James, the lawyer representing Knockwood’s window, described him as someone in need of help who police should have taken to the hospital — not dropped off downtown.

“The allegation is that they were neglectful in their duty,” James said in an interview Monday afternoon outside the hearing by the Office of the Police Commissioner.

“They had an obligation to investigate and, from our position, apprehend Tyler under the Mental Health Act and that they failed to do so, and so that failing to do so is a neglect of duty.”

Knockwood’s widow, Laura MacArthur, painted a picture of a man increasingly agitated and paranoid in the days before he died. She said he’d gone to the hospital a few days earlier because he harmed himself and accused her of trying to poison him.

She told the hearing she called police and filed an emergency protection order when he became aggressive. She said she tried to tell police about his mental health history but they weren’t listening.

"I was fairly certain he was going to kill himself if he was not taken to hospital, I expressed it repeatedly,” she testified.

Speaking outside the hearing, James called all of this important context into Knockwood’s state of mind the night he took his own life.

“We want to ensure that our officers are well trained and equipped to comply with their legal and statutory obligations,” James said. “When they’re not, we want to make sure that they’re held to account so that these types of issues don’t persist and they don’t happen again.”

Lawyers representing the police officers pointed out during the hearing that Knockwood did take himself to the hospital at one point, but told staff he was going through a divorce and asked them not to share any information with his wife.