Toronto woman who fell from balcony after police arrived had seizures, inquest hears

A Toronto woman who fell from a highrise balcony while police were in her home more than six years ago had a long history of seizures due to epilepsy, often followed by confusion and aggressive behaviour, a coroner's inquest into her death heard Tuesday.

Regis Korchinski-Paquet had experienced two seizures the morning of May 27, 2020, hours before police were called in the late afternoon over a "rapidly developing and violent family disturbance that involved knives," coroner's counsel said.

Korchinski-Paquet herself had made three of the five calls to police, and a neurologist who heard the recordings told the inquest she sounded distressed and repetitive, as though she couldn't remember her previous calls.

Less than half an hour later, Korchinski-Paquet, a woman of Ukrainian, Black and Indigenous ancestry, was dead, having fallen from the 24th-floor.

She was 29.

"Today, we begin this inquest hoping to get answers, understand what happened and help ensure that people experiencing a crisis receive a safe and compassionate response from first responders," her family said in a statement read to jurors.

"Regis brought people together across our city.

Let's take this opportunity to work towards meaningful change for the years to come." Police and paramedics were called on multiple occasions in the years preceding Korchinski-Paquet's death, some of them related to her seizures and others including mentions of her seizures, according to an agreed narrative read at the inquest.

Medical records showed her seizures were often followed by symptoms such as "confusion, irritability, physically and verbally abusive behaviour and episodic amnesia," the inquest heard.

Dr.

Julien Hébert, a neurologist specializing in epilepsy who reviewed Korchinski-Paquet's records for the inquest, testified that on several of those occasions, she showed patterns of behaviour in keeping with postictal delirium or psychosis, both mental states that can occur after seizures.

Postictal psychosis is marked by a disconnect from reality, while postictal delirium — the more common of the two — involves an altered state of awareness and confusion, though it can also include a disconnect from reality, he said.

In one incident in October 2017, an ambulance was called for Korchinski-Paquet after she appeared confused on a public transit bus, he said.

She ended up walking out of the ambulance and into oncoming traffic, "suggesting that she had impairment in her appreciation of her environment and her awareness as well as her judgment," the neurologist said.