A mental health nurse who interviewed an inmate at Waikeria Prison shortly before his suspected suicide says she felt the “warm and confident” man was “setting her up.”
A three-day coronary inquest into the death of Grant Brent Whittal-Bell – who died on November 17, 2019 – is ongoing in the Hamilton District Court.
Whittal-Bell had been taken into custody while awaiting court proceedings after what have been labeled “very serious charges”, however details of those charges have been redacted by the court.
The Rotorua man had been arrested in October and had only been in prison for a month at the time of his death.
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On Wednesday, the second day of the inquest, the court heard testimony from Annette McWaters, a community mental health nurse who works on the prison’s forensic team.
McWaters said he interviewed Whittal-Bell on Oct. 23. It was a meeting etched in his memory, he said.
“I remember that he was too confident, too warm in his commitment to me,” she told the court.
“That is an unusual presentation. I remember thinking it was very strange.”
Most people who were in prison for the first time weren’t so sure of themselves, he said. Whittal-Bell seemed to have a good understanding of her own mental health situation and history.
“That guy was very confident. I felt like I was being groomed by him.”
Whittal-Bell insisted she didn’t need any special attention from mental health staff, McWaters said, and her behavior was “in line with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder” and therefore not particularly worrying.
“Sometimes you meet characters who are very confident, and that’s how they are.”
McWaters said he had worked at the prison since early 2019 and had done three to four such forensic evaluations each week.
Regardless of Whittal-Bell’s claims that he was fine, McWaters had recommended that he be referred to the Emerge Aotearoa rehabilitation service, which includes supervised treatment for mental health issues; staff.
Genevieve Haszard, an attorney who assisted the coroner, asked if the staff of the former Waikato District Board of Health, the health personnel employed by the Department of Corrections, were as well aligned as they could be, or if there was an effect that the two organizations were effectively “isolated”.
Haszard asked: Could this increase the chance that important information will be lost?
It could, McWaters said; however, some prisoners were not interested in their personal data being shared with prison staff, who in many cases viewed them as the enemy. There were also other restrictions on the sharing of information that were governed by the Privacy Act.
Generally speaking, much more information sharing was needed across the board, McWaters said, including from prisoners themselves.
“Prison is a horrible place to be… We have to continue to encourage the men and women in prison to stay open with their communication.”
Haszard also asked the nurse about the prominent scars on Whittal-Bell’s arms and if that was a strong sign that he was suicidal.
“People cut themselves out of relief, people cut themselves out of euphoria… I’ve seen horrendous cuts and that person has said ‘I went a little too deep,’ they laugh.
“Yes, [Whittal-Bell] He had horrible scars, but that doesn’t mean he cut himself to kill himself.”
McWaters said that while the Whittal-Bell case was the only suspicious suicide in which she was directly involved, in hindsight she would not have changed a thing in her approach to it.
The court also heard testimony from Michelle Doran, Whittal-Bell’s case manager, who interviewed the “calm and well-spoken” man the day after McWaters but was not aware of that event.
“We didn’t have access to any forensic information at all.”
It had also recommended that Whittal-Bell be referred to Emerge, however, “he was within his rights to decline an interview.”
She had a subsequent quick chat with him on November 14.
“I was happy, as happy as you could be there.”
Others who gave evidence included prison clinical team leader Sheena Finlayson and nurse Helen Podmore, who faced numerous questions about why the Whittal-Bell situation had not been addressed and what had become of the recommendations, to which they could not all respond.
This was in part because some of the information about him had been destroyed in the prison riot that occurred shortly after Christmas 2019.
