Just 26 minutes ticked by from the initial 911 call that summoned police to Regis Korchinski-Paquet’s door until the moment the 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman fatally fell from her 24th-floor balcony.
Much happened in that time, as revealed in a detailed report released Wednesday from Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the police watchdog that probed the high-profile death — an incident that has set off protests amid an international reckoning over policing and race.
After interviews with 15 civilian witnesses and seven police officers, a review of audio and video from the scene, surveillance footage, forensic evidence and more, the watchdog’s director, Joseph Martino, concluded no criminal charges should be laid in the case, a decision called “disappointing” by lawyers for the family of Korchinski-Paquet, who believe there was a basis for criminal charges.
Acknowledging the high degree of public interest in the case, the SIU released an unusually detailed summary of its investigative efforts and the evidence collected in the case, including transcripts of 911 calls and photos taken from the scene, providing a chronology of events.
Below, based on the SIU report, a timeline of what happened immediately before and after Korchinski-Paquet’s tragic May 27 death.
5:13 p.m. Korchinski-Paquet’s mother, Claudette Beals-Clayton, calls 911 saying she needs police to come to her home. “My son and daughter are fighting,” she says, adding her daughter had had a seizure earlier in the day and was throwing bottles and that there is glass all over the front door. Yelling can be heard in the background.
“I want the police to take — literally take her out of my house. I don’t want her here.”
5:15 p.m. Korchinski-Paquet calls 911 while her mother is still on the phone with a 911 dispatcher. Panting, she says she needs police to come because she is being attacked. She tells the 911 dispatcher that she requires an ambulance, at one point saying, “you can’t get in you dumb f—-.” Korchinski-Paquet’s brother, Reece Korchinski, then separately called 911, requesting help for a “physical altercation between me and my sister.”
“She initiated the assault with two knives, right. But I also did protect myself, right. So. But I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay right here,” the brother says, noting he is in the stairwell while his mother is in the hallway and Korchinski-Paquet is in the apartment with broken bottles and two knives.
He tells the dispatcher that they had been fighting over the TV volume, and that Korchinski-Paquet had had two epileptic seizures. In the past, they’ve left the house after these episodes so she can calm down, but today that hadn’t worked.
5:16 p.m. pc28police dispatch officers from the local station, 11 division, to the scene. The call is considered an urgent “priority one” call.
“It’s a hot shot for the brother attacking the complainant. Getting another call for unknown trouble. I think it’s the parent calling in, having a problem with the son and daughter, wanting them removed,” the dispatcher says.
5:22 p.m. Korchinski-Paquet calls 911 for a second time, saying: “I need to call the police. My mom just attacked me.” She tells the dispatcher that when she told her brother to turn the TV off, he began punching her in the head and choking her.
“They – they – they pulled out knives,” she says when asked about weapons.
Asked if there are children present, Korchinski-Paquet says her brother just moved in with his children.
5:29 p.m. The first two of seven pc28police officers arrive at the family’s apartment unit on the 24th floor of 100 High Park Ave. They are met outside the unit, near the building’s elevators, by Beals-Clayton and Korchinski-Paquet, while her brother is at the other end of the hallway.
The officers attempt to keep the siblings apart, and at one point one officer uses his arm to physically block Korchinski-Paquet from moving towards her brother. Another police officer arrives and two of them begin speaking with Korchinski-Paquet near the elevators, and she tells them she had seizures earlier in the day and damaged the TV after her brother wouldn’t turn the volume down. She soon after tries to push past the officers.
5:30 p.m. Korchinski-Paquet places her third 911 call, in the presence of officers, saying she was just attacked by her mother and brother, who she said had been drinking since 10 a.m.
“I need to pee. I have to piss,” she says before hanging up.
5:32 p.m. One of the first officers to arrive reports back to dispatch that they are on scene with two people, that there are no knives present, and that an ambulance isn’t necessary.
5:34 p.m. Two more police officers arrive.
5:35 p.m. After Korchinski-Paquet tells officers she needs to urinate, two officers agree to allow her in the apartment and they accompany her in. She can be seen on the apartment building’s surveillance video re-entering the apartment. She calls her father from the bathroom.
At the same time, Beals-Clayton tells another officer she wants her daughter to be taken to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and paramedics arrive on the 24th floor with a stretcher.
5:37 p.m. Beals-Clayton re-enters the apartment, followed shortly after by Korchinski-Paquet’s brother. One of the officers tells Korchinski-Paquet that she should speak with a paramedic on the scene due to her seizures.
5:38 p.m. Three more police officers enter the apartment. Korchinski-Paquet does not speak with the paramedic, but instead begins backing away from the officers, toppling an air conditioning unit that had been by the balcony door, and then going onto the balcony.
One of the officers tells Korchinski-Paquet to come back, and tries to open the door, but Korchinski-Paquet keeps it closed with her body weight. She then quickly scales the balcony railing.
“What is she doing?” Beals-Clayton then asks.
“She’s jumping balconies,” an officer says soon after.
“She can’t get to the neighbour’s,” Beals-Clayton says, followed by Korchinski-Paquet’s brother remarking: “It’s blocked off.”
5:39 p.m. One of the officers reports over the radio that Korchinski-Paquet was attempting to cross over to the neighbouring balcony.
“She’s scaling the balconies here,” one officer says. “The daughter made her way out to the patio and climbed over the railing and it appears she’s trying to get to the neighbour’s unit. She’s hanging on the side of the patio.”
One of the officers orders everyone out of the apartment, then goes with another to knock on the front door of the apartment next door. When he returns to the apartment, he goes onto the balcony and sees there is netting around the neighbouring balcony, making it inaccessible from the outside. He looks down and sees that Korchinski-Paquet has fallen.
“Can we get an ambulance ASAP. The girl fell,” he radios in.
Beals-Clayton can be heard telling a neighbour that her daughter has jumped.
6:05 p.m. Korchinski-Paquet is pronounced dead.
6:35 p.m. The SIU is called in to investigate the death.
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