SASKATOON – A 23-year-old Saskatoon man wants answers after two of his fingers were chopped off by a Saskatoon police cell door Sunday.
Keaton Adamyk was arrested for public intoxication around 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 22 in the area of 22nd Street West and Avenue U South. He doesn’t remember what happened and says he asked Saskatoon Police Service (SPS) for a video of the incident but has been denied access.
“I don't remember anything at all,” he told SASKTODAY.ca in a phone interview Oct. 25. “I woke up in the hospital and I was looking at my fingers and realized something really bad must have happened.”
Adamyk said he wants to know how it happened.
“I came up with a few theories. I kind of feel like they did it on purpose because I was pissing them off or something. But it could have also been on accident, but I'm not too sure.”
The injuries have affected his life.
“It’s my right hand is my dominant hand and it’s going to be hard for me to do things now. I. can’t even brush my teeth. It’s hard for me to eat even.”
In a media release, SPS said that a man had resisted an officer’s commands when entering SPS Detention. He was medically assessed and cleared by the paramedic in detention before being taken to a cell. But when officers closed the cell door, the man reached his hand into the path of the closing door, which resulted in serious, non-life-threatening injuries to his fingers, said SPS. He was taken to hospital by ambulance.
Adamyk admits that he is dealing with substance abuse and wants to check himself into the mental health ward of a hospital for treatment.
In September, his girlfriend, who was pregnant with his first child, died. Ever since, he has been struggling to deal with her death and the loss of his first child.
“She was pregnant at the time and we were going to have a kid but she passed away. It’s just really rough… She was the best.
“I have been drinking pretty heavily ever since,” he added.
“We had a lot of plans. We planned on getting married and planned on getting a car together.”
A few weeks after her death, he found his long-time friend deceased from an overdose.
“Everybody was telling me that she wasn’t replying so they asked me to go check up on her. When I got there, there was like four cop cars on the block so I was thinking ‘what’s going on?’ I kind of felt like she was gone when I saw the cop cars.”
SPS say that in regards to the incident where Adamyk's fingers were injured, a Use of Force report was completed in accordance with their policy.
Joshua Grella, a spokesperson from SPS told SASKTODAY.ca in an email Thursday that, to the best of his understanding SPS hasn’t received a formal request to view the video by the person involved.
“Doing so would be by way of a FOIP request,” said Grella.
More on SPS’s FOIP process can be found at https://saskatoonpolice.ca/foip/
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