Man waiting more than a day in Winnipeg ER had been dead for hours: doctor

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Brian Sinclair (top right in wheelchair) is shown in a screengrab from surveillance footage of his time at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre in September, 2008. A triage aide who was the first to talk to a man who died during a 34-hour wait in a hospital\'s emergency room says he doesn\'t remember him at all, even though he looked in his direction many times over two 12-hour shifts. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO

WINNIPEG – A doctor who tried to revive a man who sat unattended for more than a day in a Winnipeg hospital’s emergency room says Brian Sinclair had been dead for hours by the time he finally saw a doctor.

Travis Minish was the emergency physician at the Health Sciences Centre in September 2008 when Sinclair was found dead in the waiting room.

Minish told an inquest into Sinclair’s death that the 45-year-old double-amputee was extremely stiff when he was brought into the resuscitation room.

Minish says he couldn’t insert an oxygen tube because Sinclair’s jaw was clenched shut.

He says Sinclair’s torso was cool and blood had begun to pool in his thighs.

Sinclair died of a treatable bladder infection caused by a blocked catheter.

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