Prison guards stood by and filmed a teenage inmate as she gasped for breath while she slowly choked to death in her cell.
Ashley Smith, died in 2007 at Kitchener’s Grand Valley Institution for Women in south Ontario.
For the first time, the full video depicting the asphyxiation of the troubled teenager was played to a jury this week at the coroner’s inquest.
The video shows the guards watching the 19-year-old through a hatch door in her cell.
At the time the video begins, recorded at 6:45 a.m., guards had been debating for about 10 minutes what to do about Smith, according to CBC News.
Smith was institutionalized for much of her adolescence in the youth system in her native New Brunswick before being transferred to the federal adult system.
Vessels in Ashley’s face and eyes had burst and her face had gone mottled from previous times she had tried to asphyxiate herself.
Guards had been told she was seeking attention, and were instructed not to intervene unless she stopped breathing.
Troubling: Ashley Smith taking her last breaths as she lies on the floor of her prison cell while guards watch
Tragic: Smith seen left communicating with guards at the window before her death and right after guards rush in to try and save her
But in the video guards had watched Smith on the floor – wedged between a steel bed and the wall – as she occasionally heaved, her dying gasps picked up on the video.
She is seen wearing a quilted jacket which is given to patients who self-harm or as a restrain jacket.
She has her head pressed against the wall and is motionless, reported the Globe and Mail.
‘It’s been long enough for me to take that off,’ a guard calls through the door.
‘Sit up so you can come over here and I can cut it off.’
‘Ashley. Can you get it off yourself?’
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