RELEASING OVERDOSE VICTIM SAID A MISTAKE

Fatal drug overdose victim Mickey Groves should not have been released from
hospital on a frigid winter morning seven years ago, an emergency medicine
expert said yesterday.

Dr. John Crosby said Groves should have been admitted to the Calgary
General Hospital -- even if against his will -- instead of discharged.

Crosby said Groves' condition wasn't monitored long enough before he was
allowed to leave the hospital in the early morning hours of March 17, 1997.

Groves, 24, was found on a park bench near the now demolished facility the
following afternoon after he succumbed to a morphine and alcohol overdose.

Crosby told lawyer Clint Suntjens staff should have searched Groves when he
was brought in by ambulance after being found in a drug-induced coma.

If they had, he said, Dr. John W.R. King would have discovered Groves was
using long-lasting morphine which likely kicked in after anti-narcotic
medicine wore off.

He said narcan, which reverses the effect of narcotics like morphine, lasts
about an hour, while the drugs Groves had work for up to 12 hours.

"After an hour you could lapse back into coma again," he said.

Under cross-examination by King's lawyer, Daniel Gallagher, the former head
of the Oakville, Ont. emergency department said he would have used force to
search Groves, if needed.

Groves' mother, Bertha Russell, is seeking damages of $40,000 for
bereavement under the Fatal Accidents Act. The trial continues.