police officers failed vulnerable and suicidal woman after her arrest and placement in in police cell where she committed suicide, the investigating jury held found.
Kelly Hartigan-Burns, 35, died in December 2016 after treatment with “reckless indifference,” activists say, on the part of the police in Blackburn. She was arrested after members of in public noticed her late at night on a walk in as well as out of traffic in her pajamas say she wanted to die.
Her family fought for investigate, believing that she failed Lancashire Police at all levels, from control room to first responder on in street, in her home and at the police station.
The Preston Coroner’s Court jury agreed, concluding that “if the officers had shown more compassion, acted diligently, practiced common sense, followed directions and procedures from the moment they found Kelly and throughout her detention, there could have been another outcome.”
The jury gave an open opinion, with narration detailing the litany of failures that they say contributed to her death.
In October 2021, the find of was a gross offense made against Jason Marsden, Enforcement Sergeant in the Hartigan-Burns case forbidding him to return to work for police.
After arrest late on December 3, 2016, police officers took Hartigan Burns home to his partner, Cal, who was a psychiatric nurse. Cal alerted the police that she committed suicide. risk logs of police incidents showed five separate mental health incidents related to Hartigan-Burns. in previous year.
But instead of using their strength in mental health cases to get Hartigan-Burns to the hospital place of safety the police arrested her for common assault as a result of an argument she had with Cal that evening.
There was no consideration made of her mental health history when it was placed in cell with no cctv and she was left on her own when the warden sergeant left two hours early without checking on her. His colleagues I didn’t check it either until I was found does not answer in camera and taken to the hospital, where she died.
June Hartigan, Kelly mother said, “For last five years we were tormented by what we knew was going to happen, by all the things the police did wrong and all the ways in which Kelly could have been saved. Although it helps to hear that the jury can see the same level of offence, i.e. fact it took five years to reach this stage, so it’s something of empty victory.
Deborah Coles, director of in campaign group The investigation stated: “Kelly was a woman in mental health crisis, in need of care and specialist supportnot guardianship. The police treated her suffering, vulnerability and suicide risk with reckless indifference.”
