10 guards on hand to put Ashley Smith into restraint chair
Jurors in the Ashley Smith inquest viewed dramatic video Tuesday showing the teen being strapped into a chair at a women’s prison in Nova Scotia because she was banging her head against the floor and wall in her segregation cell.
Six specially trained guards in black suits and visors on their helmets are seen on the video entering Ashley’s cell in late August 2007. When they enter, four other guards from the jail are already waiting in her cell wearing hazardous materials suits.
The guards are dressed in the suits because Ashley had in the past smeared feces in her cell, and thrown urine and feces through a food slot on her segregation door.
On the video the guards in the suits already have Ashley pinned face down on the floor of her cell, with her head on a pillow. Her hands are cuffed behind her back and her legs are shackled.
The guards then take Ashley and strap her into the chair.
Alfred Legere, the warden at Nova Institution in Truro, N.S., where Ashley was being held at the time, told the inquest this week that the chair was used because he feared Ashley might kill herself by banging her head. She was bleeding from her head as a result of this activity, Legere said Tuesday.
“Ashley was self-mutilating . . . . There was blood on the floor in the cell. I had no other option but put her in a (restraining) chair for her protection,’’ Legere told the inquest.
“You’re hurting my leg!’’ Ashley screams at one point in the video as the guards strap her into the chair.
The guards put a spit shield over her mouth, place her in the chair and strap her across the waist and chest. Her arms and legs also strapped to the chair.
Ashley, who is wearing a prison issue gown, sits passively for some time after she’s tied in, then suddenly erupts and tries to free her hands. Four of the six guards pounce on her and tie her back in.
The inquest heard Monday that Ashley began acting out shortly after another inmate in segregation at Nova took a guard hostage, an incident that Ashley witnessed.
Ashley was held in segregation at the jail from the moment she arrived at Nova because she was considered a threat to harm herself and others, Legere has testified.
