Inquest looks into why inmate shared cell with serial killer
Posted October 29, 2012 6:33 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
AGASSIZ (NEWS1130) – An inquest that may shed some light on why an inmate killed at Mountain Institution in Agassiz had to share his cell with a serial killer opens today.
Jeremy Phillips, 33, was serving a six-year sentence for aggravated assault when he was forced to live with Michael McGray, who is nicknamed the “Homicidal Drifter.”
McGray had been convicted in the murders of six people, including a mother and her 11-year-old daughter in Moncton in 1998.
“A number of questions were asked at the time about the placement of inmates and how it came that somebody with Mr. McGray’s checkered past was set up in such a way that he could get at Mr. Phillips quite so easily,” says Barb McLintock with the BC Coroners Service. “The chief coroner decided this would be a good case to take to inquest.”
Phillips became McGray’s seventh murder victim in November 2010. McGray pleaded guilty a short while later and was handed another life sentence.
“An inquest jury can never do anything that is fault finding, this is strictly a fact-finding exercise,” McLintock says. “What we hope would come out would be some recommendations, which would try and prevent deaths in similar circumstances.”
Phillips’ family is suing Corrections Canada for $11 million, claiming McGray shouldn’t have been in a medium security prison, or in the same cell as Phillips.
