‘I’ll duct-tape your face,’ RCMP pilot testifies at Ashley Smith inquest

An RCMP pilot seen in harrowing video defended his decision to restrain a teenaged inmate with duct-tape, saying he was concerned about her safety and that of prison guards on a flight.

Testifying at an inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, Cpl. Stephane Pilon said the prisoner had undone her seat belt and could have overpowered her guards.

He also said he worried about turbulence.

“I’ve got two, possibly three corrections officers who are not buckled in,” Pilon said.

Smith, 19, was being flown in April 2007 from a psychiatric prison in Saskatoon to Montreal aboard the police turbo-prop.

At first, she appears relaxed and compliant as she sits in her seat, looking out the window from time to time, but she becomes fidgety, apparently ignoring an order to keep her hands on the seat rests.

At a given moment, correctional officers accompanying her decide she needs to be fully restrained.

Among other things, they put a spit hood over her head. She starts to protest, soils herself, and the situation becomes increasingly unsettling.

They use a “pig chain” as they struggle to try to secure her hands to her shackles. They put a second spit hood on.

“Let go, you’re hurting me,” Smith says at several points.

At times, Smith tries to remove the spit hoods. But any resistance appears to be minimal.

Pilon, the pilot in charge, says he went back into the cabin because he was concerned the plane could hit turbulence and the guards or Smith could be thrown around, so he wanted everyone in their seats and buckled.

He warns Smith to behave.

“Don’t bite me,” he says.

“I’m not,” Smith responds.

“It’ll get worse if you do.”

“How can it get worse?”

“I’ll duct-tape your face.”

Pilon said he had once been bitten by a drug user and, even though Smith was wearing two spit hoods, he worried about communicable diseases.

“We’re at 33,000 feet,” he testified. “If I get injured, we have an emergency on our hands.”

The guards use duct tape to bind Smith’s wrists together. Her occasional protests are meek.

“You’re hurting my hands,” she says.

“Relax,” a guard says as he continues to duct-tape her hands and arms. “I don’t understand why you act like this, Ashley.”

At times, Smith and the guards banter.

Julian Falconer, the Smith family lawyer, said the video shows prison authorities did not have the tools to manage the mentally disturbed teen.

“They trussed her up like an animal,” he said during a break in proceedings.

Smith’s family had long demanded the video be made public, but Correctional Service Canada fought its release every step of the way.

Screening of the video in October following a two-year battle helped break open a legal logjam that had stalled the inquest.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper called CSC’s behaviour unacceptable and ordered prison authorities to co-operate with the inquest.

Smith, of Moncton, N.B., was transferred from the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon after a supervising guard was charged criminally with assaulting her there.

She choked herself to death at a prison in Kitchener, Ont., in October 2007.

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