N.S. avoids public scrutiny in high-profile deaths:’How can we hope for change?’
HALIFAX — Lionel Desmond suffered rages from post-traumatic stress. He told relatives he struggled to access mental health services. Then he killed his family and himself.
Six months later, no public inquest aimed at preventing similar deaths is on the horizon — frustrating Desmond family members and repeating a familiar pattern for other Nova Scotians who’ve sought fatality inquiries.
Debbie Stultz-Giffin has followed the Desmond case since January, when the former soldier killed his wife, mother, daughter and himself in Upper Big Tracadie.
She sees links with her own fruitless calls for a public inquiry into the death of her 87-year-old mother, Dorothy Stultz. She died after a violent shove by a male resident with dementia in a nursing home on March 1, 2012.