IG news Update,
Sarafina Denny says it’s been more than a month since her younger brother died, she still has trouble eating or sleeping.
She says she struggles to understand why her brother Nikos D’Andre Spring – a quiet man who loved boxing, music and playing with his young children – had an altercation with prison guards on Christmas Eve. He later died in the Bordeaux prison in Montreal. Must be released to come home to his family.
“It breaks my heart,” she said in a phone interview.
“It’s been over a month now, and we’re really not getting any answers. And we would love to know why they did this to her. They didn’t deserve what they did.”
Spring, 21, was illegally detained at Montreal’s Bordeaux prison on December 24 after guards put a spit hood over her head and pepper-sprayed her twice.
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Quebec’s Department of Public Safety has described Spring’s detention as “illegal” because he was ordered released by a judge on December 23, but he was still behind bars the next day when he suffered injuries that led to his death.
Denny said the family has received little information from investigators about the moments before her death, and most of what they have learned has come from reading online news. She said they had not known since the spring and did not know when his release had been ordered, so he did not know how close he would come to being home for Christmas.
Now, she is asking authorities to release any relevant video footage of the incident to her family, and said she wants the public to see it as well.
“I want answers to what really happened to my brother, and to know what he did and why he did it,” she said. “We want justice.”
Denny said the spring was well received by both his Montreal community and his family, who had come from the Caribbean country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in search of a better life.
One of her last memories, she said, was of him showing up to help her carry the oven into her house, which she misses because she knows how much he loved Caribbean food.
Previous family statements said Vasanth struggled with mental health issues, but his sister said on Monday that he was not “dangerous, aggressive or harmful”.
“He was very loving, very kind, very calm,” she said.
“Not a rowdy person. Unless you see him, you wouldn’t even know he’s in the room, how calm he is.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says video footage exists, and it should be released to the family. The organization is expected to address the media at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
“We know it’s been reviewed and we know it’s very troubling,” executive director Noah Mendelsohn Aviv said in a phone interview.
Mendelsohn Aviv said there are many questions that need to be answered, including why Spring was still in custody when a judge ordered her released, and whether guards used a potentially dangerous combination of spit hood and pepper spray. Why did you use
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The calls for the release of the video came after authorities in the United States released video footage on Friday that shows Tyr Nichols being beaten by five Memphis police officers. The footage emerged a day after the officers were charged with murder in Nichols’ death.
Mendelsohn Aviv said the question of publicly releasing violent footage to the public is not a straightforward one.
“On the one hand, you have a real need for sensitivity and consideration in the treatment of footage of a person being violently treated by those in power, and on the other hand, there is a need for public transparency and accountability and to deal with what has happened.” There needs to be a reckoning,” she said.
Denny, for her part, said she wants the public to see the footage to help make sure what happened to her brother doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“The public needs to see what they did,” she said of the officers at the prison.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
