An unfolded sequence of tragic events has elicited legal action from Candyce Szkwarek, a victim of a violent attack at the hands of her colleague, Trevor Farley, at the Seven Oaks General Hospital in Winnipeg. Farley, who was acquitted of the assault on Szkwarek and for the cruel act of ending his parents’ lives, has propelled Szkwarek’s decision to mount a legal suit against the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Shared Health. Szkwarek has charged the Crisis Response Centre’s personnel in Winnipeg of negligence, asserting that it paved the way for Farley’s horrific onslaughts in a matter of hours.
The course of Farley’s trial unveiled the defendant’s precarious mental state — a psychosis that placed him under an involuntary hold at the crisis centre, a command that was distressingly overlooked before the gruesome events in 2021 unfolded.
Correspondingly, Lori Schellenberg, a witness to the attack on Szkwarek, has laid her own lawsuit. The defendants—Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Shared Health have abstained from issuing comments, considering the ongoing legal proceedings.
This multi-pronged legal battle further intensifies as three of Farley’s kin previously filed a suit against the healthcare entities, attributing their parents’ demise to the crisis centre’s perceived substandard services.
Szkwarek’s representation, conceding that her life was irrevocably changed after the incident, asserts that Schellenberg too has borne the heavy toll of the aftermath. The firm contends that performing her vocational duties under such overwhelming circumstances has resulted in a detrimental mental impact on Schellenberg.
Szkwarek, who has not been able to resume professional duties since the episode, seeks redress for lost earnings, physical injury, and distress. Schellenberg, too, is pressing for fiscal compensation for her lost income and distress.
The lawsuit cites that Farley’s reported symptoms of delusions, hallucinations, and suicidal tendencies led the authorities to enforce an involuntary hold. This mandated move, to a secure room monitored by the staff until his transfer to an in-patient psychiatric ward, failed tragically.
Accusations of the crisis centre’s inadequacy in gauging Farley’s state and the subsequent risk he posed cast long shadows. Despite Farley’s unnerving exit from the centre, all the staff did was notify the police.
The events that succeeded are etched in tragedy. Farley went on to brutally end the lives of his parents and inflict extensive injuries upon Szkwarek, his then-nurse colleague. Szkwarek weathered the attack, sustaining severe injuries that kept her hospitalised for four months.
Concurrently, Schellenberg, a renal services manager at the hospital, witnessed the horrifying incident first-hand, providing crisis management assistance on-site. Consequently, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, forcing her to take a leave of absence since December 2021.
