海角社区官网

Each day of a tense trial last fall, relatives and friends had filled the seats of the public gallery, donning pins that brought 19-year-old Facey’s youthful grin into the courtroom. They’d listened intently to more than a week of evidence detailing the worst day of their lives, the testimony regularly drawing tears and sorrowful shakes of the head.

Now, after more than three years of confusion and grief, his parents and three siblings were processing the verdict from an Ontario judge, a ruling that heaped plain-spoken criticism on the 海角社区官网cop听on trial,听yet failed to reflect the enormity of the family’s loss.

Mostly, said听Tanisha Hutton, Facey鈥檚 eldest sister,听they felt numb.

“It just didn’t match what we felt would be justice for Chadd,” she said.

In late November, off-duty 海角社区官网police officer Calvin Au was found guilty of assault stemming from a violent 2021 clash in a suburban Brampton park over a private watch sale arranged online. After realizing it was a fake, Au had chased down the seller, Facey, tackling him to the ground using what a judge ruled was excessive force.

The story didn’t end there.

A tragic fact 鈥渓oomed over the trial,鈥� the judge said. Shortly after the take down, Facey 鈥� an otherwise healthy teen who worked at Canadian Tire and had dreams of becoming a hip-hop artist 鈥� fell ill and lost consciousness. He was rushed to hospital, where he died of a brain bleed.

Yet Facey鈥檚 sudden death hours after Au鈥檚 take down went unexamined at trial, and was virtually unmentioned. Ten days before Au was set to be tried on a听rare count of manslaughter, prosecutors withdrew the charge, saying there was no longer any reasonable prospect of conviction. The case proceeded instead on one count of assault causing bodily harm, an offence the judge later concluded couldn鈥檛 be proven, either.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for next month.

The outcome has left Facey’s family with an aching lack of closure, and the belief his death has not gotten the scrutiny it deserves. With no examination of the potential link to Au’s actions, what, exactly, happened in Facey’s final moments remains uncertain. They have unanswered questions, too, about the expert opinion by听Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist about Facey’s cause of death, an evaluation that proved fatal to the Crown’s manslaughter case on the eve of trial.

Fay Fagan, Facey’s mother, fears no meaningful听change or accountability will come from her immense loss.

鈥淚t鈥檚 like my child was nobody,鈥� she said. 鈥淟ike he was nothing.鈥�

A Kijiji deal gone bad

The events of听April 26, 2021, are by now well documented. That day, 海角社区官网police Const. Gurmakh Benning听drove to Brampton on an errand: to pick up an Apple watch he’d purchased on Kijiji. He brought along off-duty colleague, Au, to authenticate it.

The pair met Facey, the seller, near a suburban Brampton school. Shortly after $400 exchanged hands, Au determined the watch was a fake, prompting the cops to pursue Facey, who’d torn away on foot. Au admitted at trial that he caught up to Facey then physically took him to the ground to make an arrest 鈥� a tackle the trial judge听found was听unreasonable force, in part because the unarmed, 128-pound Facey posed no physical threat.

Exactly what happened immediately after the clash is unknown, but it’s uncontested that Facey swiftly听showed signs he was unwell. Friends who picked him up after the encounter brought him home when he became听breathless and lethargic in the car; by the time his youngest sister, Renae, saw him two hours after the clash, Facey’s eyes were rolling in the back of his head and he had dry saliva on his face.

鈥淗e kept repeating, 鈥業 can鈥檛 feel my legs and I鈥檓 cold,鈥欌�� she testified at trial.

As her brother was loaded into an ambulance, she noticed something on his forehead: a hematoma, or pooling of blood, about the size of a quarter. She told the court it hadn’t been there when she saw him the night before.

Within hours, Facey was dead. He’d been rushed to Brampton Civic Hospital, where, according to hospital documentation provided to the Star, Facey had a seizure that eventually led to a 鈥渃ode blue鈥� at听8:58 p.m., indicating an adult patient is going into respiratory or cardiac arrest. Due to COVID-19 restrictions in place, he died alone.听

“They didn’t let me go to the hospital,” Fagan said. “That is one of the reasons why I’m in so much pain. I never got to see my son go.”

The unexpected death required the hospital to call in a coroner to perform a post-mortem examination, and, soon after, Peel Regional Police launched an investigation. Once detectives determined that Facey had been in a physical clash with two off-duty police officers the day of his death, Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) took over the probe; the civilian听police watchdog examines deaths and serious injuries involving police, including some cases when cops are off-duty.

While the criminal investigation continued, for more than a year, Facey’s family remained in the dark about what happened to him in his final hours, including his cause of death.听

鈥淚 don鈥檛 know how much longer I can wait,鈥� Fagan told the Star in 2022.

In February 2023, in a rare case of an off-duty cop charged in a homicide, the SIU charged Au with manslaughter. He was also charged with aggravated assault.听

For Facey’s family, the charges were an acknowledgment that “some kind of misconduct” had led to his demise, Fagan said. And they were finally told the cause of his death: an intercerebral hemorrhage, more commonly referred to as a brain bleed. Fagan, a registered nurse, had already suspected Facey suffered a head injury during the interaction with Au because of the hematoma on his forehead.

What caused the bleed itself, however, was less clear 鈥� as became evident shortly before the manslaughter trial.

Less than two weeks before it was to begin, Crown prosecutor Sean Horgan听downgraded the charges against Au to a single count of assault causing bodily harm. The sudden change was necessary, he said, because听a new forensic pathology opinion meant听there was no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction on manslaughter.

According to Horgan, an Ontario Centre for Forensic Science (CFS) pathologist initially found Facey died of a brain bleed but did not make any conclusion about what had caused it, leaving open the possibility he’d died from trauma to the head. That pathologist then left her role with CFS, and in late August, prosecutors were told Ontario’s听chief forensic pathologist, Michael Pollanen, would take over as the expert called to testify.

Pollanen’s view, Horgan said, was that there was a possible unidentified or 鈥渘atural鈥� cause of death, such as a spontaneous brain bleed, though he acknowledged this would be a 鈥渞are event.” If called to the stand, Pollanen told prosecutors he “would not unequivocally state that the trauma was the underlying cause of death, because he was not sure that it was.”

That opinion prompted urgent questions from the family’s lawyer, Asha James. In a sternly worded letter sent to prosecutors following the trial, and obtained by the Star, James said she was “gravely concerned with the timing of the switch in positions as to the cause of death.”

According to the letter, two other specialists who study brain diseases were consulted. One concluded听Facey’s hemorrhage could have been naturally occurring or from a head trauma, while the other provided a similar opinion “but landed on trauma as being the most likely cause of the hemorrhage,” the document said.

James wrote that the family is owed further explanation about why Pollanen apparently told prosecutors he would “advise the court to be cautious about the occurrence of a fatal head injury.” The letter demanded answers to a series of questions, including whether听Pollanen received any new information to support his position and if there were any errors in the initial report on Facey’s death.

听

She has not received any response, she said.

Through a CFS spokesperson, Pollanen declined to comment while the case was still before the courts. Horgan, the prosecutor, also said he could not comment due to the ongoing criminal proceeding.听

In a statement to the Star, Peter Brauti, lawyer for Au, said he听understands why the Facey family is feeling “a tremendous sense of loss.”听But he said the defence never believed the manslaughter charge could be supported by the evidence.

“I fully appreciate, as did all the professionals in this case, that one could argue that the timing of the brain bleed appears to have happened on the same day as the interaction with Mr. Au,” Brauti said.

“However, scientific pathology could not confirm that the brain bleed was not caused by some other factor such a bump to the head at an earlier time, exertion from running, a pre-existing condition, etc.”

In an interview, James said if the manslaughter trial had gone forward there could have been an airing of the facts, regardless of the outcome. Without it, there was no examination of the potential link between the assault and Facey’s death, and the family is left in a state of confusion.

Before Au tackled Facey to the ground, they had “a healthy young man who, by all of the evidence, was healthy on that day,” she said. “It’s very difficult to understand how those two events are not connected.”

An ‘unreliable witness’

The downgrading of Au’s charges “really knocked us down,” said Hutton, Facey’s eldest sister. Still, they hoped the trial on the lower charge would elicit some answers and accountability.

Whether it did is complicated.听

In her decision,听Superior Court Justice Jennifer Woollcombe disbelieved much of Au’s account of the incident, saying his testimony was “bizarre” and calling him an “unreliable witness.”

She rejected Au’s claim that he’d been arresting Facey when he took him down, saying he failed to identify himself as an officer. During the trial, prosecutors suggested Au’s actions amounted to street justice; in her ruling, Woollcombe said that the officers “had to be feeling at least foolish” after being “tricked by a 19-year-old.”

But听Woollcombe could not definitively conclude that Au’s assault on Facey caused the bruise on his head later confirmed in a post-mortem examination, noting he could have sustained the injury before or after the altercation.听It meant she couldn’t find him guilty of assault causing bodily harm, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail.

“Given the speed of the takedown, Au鈥檚 weight and the fact that the take down was not controlled, it seems to me highly likely that Facey sustained force to his head during the take down and that this force caused the bruise,” she wrote. “The difficulty is that I cannot be sure.”

The ruling prompted mixed emotions, Hutton said. Moments afterward, they gathered in a private room, sorting through their reactions.听

“This is not what we wanted, but it’s something,” Hutton said. “It’s an acknowledgment that something wrong happened here.”

The family is hopeful there will be other routes to answers and justice. They will be closely watching upcoming听police tribunal proceedings against Au and Benning, which have been put on hold pending the end of Au’s trial.听Both face multiple professional misconduct charges stemming from the incident, including for allegedly neglecting to report the incident to either Peel or 海角社区官网police. If found guilty, the officers could face demotion or dismissal.听

New information could come, too, from a coroner’s inquest into Facey’s death, though it’s unclear if one will happen. In Ontario, such hearings 鈥� which examine the circumstances of a death to produce recommendations, but don’t assign blame 鈥� are mandatory when someone dies in police custody, but it’s not yet known if Facey’s death would qualify.

James said it is her expectation that an inquest be held.听A spokesperson for the coroner’s office said no decision has yet been made.

Ever since Facey’s death, Fagan has kept up her near daily ritual of visiting her son’s grave, located not far from the family home in Brampton. Though she and her family remain committed to pursuing justice, they know nothing will ever make up for their loss.听

“No decision will ever bring Chadd back to us,” Fagan said.

Au’s sentencing hearing will be held Feb. 11.