The jury in the Florence Girard coroner’s inquest has returned a unanimous verdict, classifying the death of the 54-year-old woman with Down syndrome, as homicide caused by starvation.
The five-person jury also submitted 13 recommendations, including better pay for front-line caregivers, unannounced visits to homes where vulnerable clients are placed and changes to support family members of a vulnerable individual who want to care for that person in their home.
Girard weighed about 50 pounds when she died in 2018 in the Port Coquitlam home of paid caregiver Astrid Dahl.
Dahl was a subcontractor for Kinsight Community Society, an agency under contract by Community Living B.C. (CLBC), the provincial Crown corporation that funds services for adults with developmental disabilities.
In 2022, Dahl was convicted of failing to provide Girard the necessaries of life. Her initial 12-month conditional sentence was increased to a 15-month prison sentence by the B.C. Court of Appeal in 2023. Dahl never served any time in jail because of the length of the judicial process. Charges against Kinsight were stayed.
Coroner’s inquests are formal court proceedings that publicly review the circumstances of a death to address community concerns or raise awareness of preventable deaths, according to the B.C. Coroners Service website.
Jury members are not charged with finding fault but rather issue recommendations to prevent similar deaths in the future.
More to come.