SLIPPERY, SILENT SLOPE

Addictions Derailed Former Journalist, But A Port Hope Holding Cell Didn't Help

PORT HOPE -- In all the years Ron Hoath has been police chief of this
town, and he has been at the helm of the 25-officer force for more
than two decades, there has never been an in-custody death.

Until now.

That long run came to an end shortly before noon almost a fortnight
ago when 36-year-old Darryl Thompson, a former sports writer with the
nearby Cobourg Daily Star, was found dead in his cell here -- one of
two holding units carved out of an old vault in a squat building that
once housed the local children's aid office -- after he was picked
off a sidewalk on a residential street for what was cited as "public
intoxication."

Supposedly arrested "without incident" at 12:20 a.m. on Aug. 20,
Thompson was placed in a cell and was discovered later that same
morning, at 11 a.m., without vital signs.

The local coroner pronounced him dead at the scene.

'BEST WRITER I HAD'

"Normally, it's a last resort ... putting them in a cell," says
Hoath. "But, if they live alone, or there is no one to take care of
them, there is little else you can do in some cases."

Mandy Martin is the editorial director of both the Cobourg Daily Star
and the Port Hope Evening Guide. She described Darryl Thompson, found
passed out by a woman taking her dog for a midnight walk, as "the
best writer I had on staff at that time, but with issues that he
either failed to address, or would not address.

"And that's the tragedy of it all," she says.

If there was ever a talisman that Darryl Thompson had stepped onto a
slippery slope, it was his firing from the Star two years ago when he
was caught -- on video -- stealing a bottle of booze from the old
Shoeless Joe's in Cobourg on a quiet Sunday night when the bartender
momentarily left her post to go into the kitchen.

More than just writing on the wall, it was a bold-face and public
headline that Darryl Thompson was beginning to derail because of
alcohol and drugs, and perhaps a full-blown telltale to his
estrangement from the mother of his 5-year-old daughter, Emily.

Insights into Darryl Thompson's downward spiral, however, would not
be coming from her, since Maria Karampelas, a former court reporter
with the Evening Guide, responded with hostility earlier this week to
admittedly pointed questions regarding her late spouse's life and family.

Approached as she was leaving her home with her daughter,
coincidentally on the same street here where the cop who notified her
of Darryl Thompson's death also lives, Maria Karampelas was not about
to change her mind following a phone-call refusal to discuss details
on his life.

"You are not a cop. You are not an investigator. You are just a
reporter looking for a scoop," she said. "Get off my property now, or
do you want me to call the police?"

Earlier that day, Karampelas would only say -- over the phone -- that
she talked to Thompson on an almost daily basis, despite their
relationship's break up.

"He loved his daughter very much," she said. "He was very conflicted.
I don't want to tamper with the investigation, and I don't want to lay blame."

As with any in-custody death, the province's Special Investigations
Unit (SIU) is called into play to ferret out the causes and the
reasons and, coupled with that investigation, there will one day come
the mandatory inquest.

But, because the SIU is involved, it effectively puts the muzzle on
Port Hope Police Chief Ron Hoath, although it is a matter of public
record that he has complained to his local police services board that
the cells at his station present a potential "liability" should a
death ever occur.

While Hoath admitted the cells were monitored via video camera and
physically checked on a regular basis, he would not give a tour of
the small facility, nor comment directly on Darryl Thompson's
incarceration -- such as why, for example, he was jailed and not
taken a few kilometres down the road to the hospital in Cobourg.

"I just can't do it," he said. "And I cannot comment."

What is known, however, is this: While there may be video
surveillance in the cells in the Port Hope station, there are
apparently no audio monitors like down the road in Cobourg where a
prisoner's breathing patterns can be constantly monitored for audible
signs of distress.

The autopsy performed on Darryl Thompson's body turned out to be
inconclusive as to the cause of death, but the true tale of the tape
will likely be in the toxicology results that, if true to form, will
not be available to SIU investigators for at least six to eight weeks.

Small towns have few secrets, and Port Hope is no exception -- with
word on the street being that Darryl Thompson's battle with addiction
included a dependency on the pain-killing opiate Oxycontin which,
according to friend and artist Andre Milne, was initially prescribed
to him when he lost a finger tip at a picture-framing factory he was
planning to expose in a freelance human rights piece.

"Darryl was a pure, pure writer," said Milne. "But he took the method
actor approach to writing by immersing himself in the role and going
to the darkest, darkest places.

"But losing his finger did him no favour, especially when his doctor
stopped prescribing his (Oxycontin) painkillers and he had to go out
into the streets to find more.

"Those are the facts. That's what happened."

As one expert described the potent drug, a prescribed narcotic, "Only
an addict can describe the euphoria that comes from that first outlaw
hit of Oxycontin, and only an addict can describe the sheer torture
of trying to quit the narcotic painkiller known as Hillbilly Heroin."

One website, in fact, narrowed it down to a simple equation that, if
rumour and fact end up melding, will no doubt provide a perfect fit
for what the future inquest into Thompson's demise will likely
conclude. Oxycontin + alcohol = death.