Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day said the call to move the foren­sic ward of the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal to a prison is some­thing he will be con­sid­er­ing.

Af­ter two men es­caped from the men­tal health fa­cil­i­ty be­tween Tues­day night and Wednes­day morn­ing, pres­i­dent of the T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, Idi Stu­art, re­peat­ed calls to move the ward out from the hos­pi­tal, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty is­sues.

Ad­mit­ting that he per­son­al­ly did not hear the com­ments made by Stu­art, Hinds said the idea was some­thing worth con­sid­er­ing.

“I have not had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have heard any sub­mis­sion of this na­ture from the nurs­ing as­so­ci­a­tion. It is some­thing that I will now give at­ten­tion to. I have not had the ben­e­fit of that. You are telling me about it, but I have not had the ben­e­fit of con­sum­ing that.”

He added he was sure that the mat­ter of how the men es­caped was go­ing to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed to en­sure it did not hap­pen again.

Stu­art says with an em­ploy­ee-to-in­mate ra­tio of one to 15, it was a se­cu­ri­ty risk that should have been ad­dressed a long time ago.

The Foren­sic Ward is where ac­cused pris­on­ers are held and eval­u­at­ed.

On Wednes­day, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel at St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal were con­duct­ing rou­tine checks around 5.30 am when they dis­cov­ered that Ever­son Hazel­wood and Joshua Gar­raway were miss­ing.

The two have been charged with mur­der and rob­bery with vi­o­lence. Hazel­wood was re­cap­tured in Ba­lan­dra on Thurs­day by an off-du­ty prison of­fi­cer.

In 2011, then head of the psy­chi­atric nurs­es’ unit at the hos­pi­tal, Dave Sookram, pe­ti­tioned then-high court judge An­tho­ny Car­mona to have the ward moved to a prison. He added then that there were 41 pa­tients in the ward.

Speak­ing on the in­ci­dent on Thurs­day, Stu­art said if the ward was not moved, se­cu­ri­ty must be im­proved.

“Over the years, and this is in ex­cess of 30 years, this ar­gu­ment has been prof­fered to move that foren­sic ward out of the hos­pi­tal. It’s way too dan­ger­ous. But in the ab­sence of that, there must be more strin­gent safe­ty mea­sures. And def­i­nite­ly, I don’t think any­one would ex­pect one reg­is­tered men­tal nurse to pre­vent these crim­i­nals from es­cap­ing. You have to have your wits about you. You can’t make an er­ror,” Stu­art said then.

Asked re­peat­ed­ly about the call be­ing made in the past, Hinds in­stead fo­cused on con­grat­u­lat­ing the prison of­fi­cer.

“I would like to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­tend my ap­pre­ci­a­tion to that prison of­fi­cer as an of­fi­cer of the state, off-du­ty as he was, for act­ing in the man­ner in which he has. And of course, in­ves­ti­ga­tions will en­sue to de­ter­mine, among oth­er things, what can be done to cause that kind of sit­u­a­tion to not to hap­pen again.”

On Thurs­day, CEO of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty An­tho­ny Blake promised to re­spond to ques­tions con­cern­ing the es­cape and calls for the ward to be re­moved, but up to press time yes­ter­day, he did not.