Inquest into death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet hears and sees woman's final moments

Regis Korchinski-Paquet expressed difficulty breathing and reported losing control in a fight with her family in a series of agitated 911 calls shortly before she fell to her death from a 24th-floor balcony while police were inside her home, a coroner's inquest heard Thursday.

Some of the 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman's final moments were laid bare as jurors watched a compilation video that overlaid the recordings of five 911 calls and two police microphones with CCTV footage from the hallway outside her home and video from a police cruiser on May 27, 2020.

The calls made to 911 over roughly half an hour late that afternoon, including three by Korchinski-Paquet herself, brought six police officers and two paramedics to the west Toronto building in short succession.

Korchinski-Paquet's mother, Claudette Beals, was the first to call at 5:13 p.m., telling the operator she needed police immediately because her son and daughter were fighting.

Shouting could be heard in the background as Beals paced in the hallway.

Over the course of the 12-minute call, which overlapped with some of the others, Beals knocked on a neighbour's door, shouted at her children that police were coming, and eventually told the operator that the siblings had an argument and "a fight broke out." "My daughter had a seizure this morning, and so this is how basically it all started," she said.

"I just want the both of them out of my house.

I don't want no contact with neither one of them again." Meanwhile, Korchinski-Paquet made her first call to 911 at 5:15 p.m., breathing heavily as she told the operator she was being attacked and needed police immediately.

"I can't breathe!" she shouted, prompting the operator to tell her to catch her breath and explain what happened.

"My brother just attacked me," she said before the call was transferred to the paramedic service.

The call ended shortly after the operator confirmed emergency crews were on the way.

In two more calls at 5:22 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., Korchinski-Paquet said her brother and mother attacked her after she told her brother to turn down the TV.

"My brother just jumped up and started punching me in my head and choked me, and my mom jumped in and started attacking me as well," she said in the earlier of the two calls.

When asked if they had weapons, she said the pair "pulled out knives" but couldn't say where the knives were now.