A new round of testimony at the Desmond Fatality Inquiry is underway.
This latest session, the first in almost a year, started with Lionel Desmond’s sister on the stand at the Port Hawkesbury Justice Centre Tuesday morning.
Cassandra Desmond said she still can’t understand why her brother couldn’t get help for his PTSD when he asked multiple times.
“A person doesn’t go to 10 different departments and six different doctors with the same story, telling you ‘I need help, I don’t feel right, I feel like my brain is broken’ if they were getting the proper help that they needed,” she said. “Why is it that they’re being shifted through so many different doctors in so many different departments and provinces, but yet still nobody is able to give this man the proper help that he’s crying out for?”
The inquiry was called after Lionel Desmond, an Afghanistan war veteran, killed his wife, daughter, mother and himself in their home in Upper Big Tracadie, Guysborough Co. in 2017.
The inquiry, which was delayed and relocated from the Guysborough Municipal Building due to COVID-19 guidelines, is scheduled to run Tuesday-to-Friday for four weeks.
