‘He suffered and died alone’: Partner seeks answers in jail inmate’s death

LONDON Attacked before his arrest, confused and unable to walk or talk, Jamie Briggs “suffered and died alone in a dark jail cell,” his tearful partner says.

Meanwhile, the people who attacked him remain free, and police and jail officials are silent on details of his death in custody, Melanie Dickson said.

“He can’t communicate it and he’s unable to walk. He’s confused and irritated because he doesn’t know why he’s there. I don’t understand why he wasn’t sent to the hospital. The coroner has said the same thing to me,” she said.

Her account of Briggs’s last days at London’s Elgin-Middlesex Detention Center (EMDC) is corroborated in parts by Briggs’s lawyer Alison Craig.

Two days before he died, Craig said she was notified Briggs was unable to come to a court hearing because of health issues.

The day before he died, she said she was told Briggs was unable to come to the phone because of withdrawal symptoms.

Briggs, 44, was found unresponsive in his cell early on Nov. 16, and declared dead soon after paramedics arrived.

His arrest and death raise questions about how police, hospital and jail officials handled the incident that brought him to the notorious EMDC, where 21 inmates have died since 2009, 19 of them in the last nine years.

The story begins six years ago when Dickson and Briggs met in Norwich and fell in love.

“Jamie and I had a love that was undeniable,” Dickson said. “He was my soulmate.”

She calls him her rock star, funny, smart, the life of parties, and a devoted dad to his daughter.

“He was fun. He was loving. He loved his music. He played hockey his whole life. They used to call him the man with the million-dollar legs and a two-hundred brain,” Dickson recalls with a laugh.

But Briggs struggled with back pain, and over the years moved from taking prescribed OxyContin to hydromorphone to fentanyl.

He lost his job driving a cement truck in 2020 and had been trying since to beat his addiction, Dickson said.

He’d started cutting back his fentanyl use and working toward getting healthy enough to work for his property management company, she said

“He’s an incredible man when he comes to working with his hands. He’s got a crazy, awesome brain, so smart,” Dickson said.

At the same time, drug use was making him paranoid, she said.

Briggs would accuse her of having affairs and wake up fearing people were breaking into their house, she said.

In June, Briggs was charged with two counts of assault and one count of mischief. In July, he was charged again, this time with a breaching a court order and breaking and entering.

The assaults were him throwing an empty cat food tin at her and pulling her back onto a couch, Dickson said, while the mischief was breaking her cellphone.

“He didn’t hurt me,” she said. “I was scared, so I left the house.”

The break-in charge came because he’d spent the night in their house and stayed there while she went to a dental appointment in Brantford, Dickson said.

Briggs spent a week at EMDC in July, she said.

“It was awful, absolutely awful. He said he was stuck in a jail cell in that quarantine area, with two other men in the cell. He said it was so disgusting, filth you can’t even imagine, feces on ceilings and walls and spit and toilet paper and just so many gross things,” Dickson said.

He told her, “It was so inhumane. It’s like a bunch of dogs thrown into a trench,” she said.

The two ignored the court order that they stay apart, staying in the house together, Dickson said.

On Nov. 8, Briggs was in rough shape, talking nonsense to people who weren’t there, taking anti-anxiety medication but agitated and confused, Dickson said.

Early on Nov. 9, she heard a scuffle in another room and found a woman she knew on top of Briggs, punching him, before he got free and pushed her face with his hand.

The woman ran out and she locked the door, Dickson said. Moments later, her door was smashed in and a man came back with the woman.

“He took this metal stick and he smashed Jamie over the head with it and then (the woman) took a wooden stick and hit Jamie on the head with it several times,” she said. “I’m in shock. And I’m jumping in, crazy and hysterical. And I’m screaming.”

She shared with The Free Press videos from a home surveillance system. One shows a man smashing a window beside a front door with a pipe and woman beside him holding a rod of some kind. The video shows the couple enter the house.

Dickson said she’s shared the video with Tillsonburg OPP.

“I can confirm that Oxford OPP responded to a call for service on Nov. 9, and I can tell you that the incident was investigated and there were no grounds to lay charges,” media officer Const. Patti Cote said my email.

Dickson also shared photos of blood on her floor and the smashed window.

After the couple fled, she took Briggs to his parents’ house, a short walk away, she said.

“My house looked like a crime scene, blood everywhere and the window smashed out. I figured if the cops came, I didn’t want him to go to jail.”

They got Briggs’ head wound, “a huge gash,” cleaned up, Dickson said.

Briggs didn’t want to go to hospital and was in no condition to move anyway, Dickson said.

“So I lay with him, and he said to me, ‘Babe, this is our last night together. We’re never going to see each other again,’” Dickson said, crying.

Hours later, police arrived and arrested Briggs for breaking the no-contact order, she said.

According to court records, Briggs was charged in November with two more court order breaches, and charges of assault, assault causing bodily harm, and uttering threats.

OPP took him to Tillsonburg hospital, where he received nine staples in his head, then to EMDC, she said.

Dickson said she has a source in the justice system who found out what happened next.

At EMDC, Briggs was unwell, so he was taken to University Hospital for tests. At midnight, he was discharged, taken back to EMDC and put in “medical segregation,” Dickson said the source told her.

Briggs appeared for a Nov. 10 bail hearing, where he was able to move and speak, Craig said.

She and relatives tried to call jail officials for several days afterward, and were repeatedly sent to voice mail that was never returned, Dickson said.

“None of us could get through to anybody at that jail. We’re like, beside ourselves with worry. So he went the weekend without any of us getting in touch with him, or anybody just tell us what was going on.”

Her source told her Briggs spent the weekend confused, taken from segregation into a quarantine cell with two other inmates.

Craig said she was notified on the morning of Nov. 14 that Briggs was unable to show up for a hearing because of health concerns, perhaps his head injuries or blood pressure issues.

She was also notified Briggs would be getting medical attention, Craig said.

The next day she spoke to an EMDC officer who said Briggs couldn’t come to the phone because of “withdrawal symptoms,” Craig said.

“He was in jail Monday. He was in jail Tuesday, so I don’t see where the time would have been for him to have gone to the hospital. I don’t know, but it seems unlikely.”

The night of Nov. 15 the other men were let out and Briggs remained in the cell alone overnight, her source told her, Dickson said.

A check at 3:45 am Nov. 16 found him not breathing and EMS was called, she said.

The province confirmed earlier that an inmate was found unresponsive on the morning of Nov. 16 and declared dead by paramedics.

The Free Press asked the Solicitor General’s Ministry about Briggs’s health while at EMDC, and why he wasn’t taken to hospital.

“The ministry does not publicly address an individual case especially where personal health information is involved,” spokesperson Andrew Morrison said.

The province has policies and procedures that ensure inmates receive health assessments on admission and during incarceration, he said.

“Inmates who require specialized health-care services or hospitalization are accommodated accordingly,” Morrison said.

Dickson said she’s spoken to coroner Dr. Franklin Warsh.

According to Dickson, Warsh told her Briggs had been complaining about his stomach for two or three days before he was put in the quarantine cell.

He also told her Briggs was confused and irritated because he didn’t know where he was, but wasn’t able to communicate beyond saying he had a sore stomach, Dickson said.

The coroner determined the preliminary cause of death was a ruptured ulcer and sepsis, she said.

“I can’t comment on any investigation, especially one that is ongoing,” Warsh said when contacted Friday by The Free Press.

Dickson said she wonders if Briggs was fed or given fluids, and how he was medically treated.

“What happened during those hours?” she said.

“Jamie had a drug addiction and he was paranoid. That’s not the place that you stick somebody when they’re like this. You don’t put them in jail, but somewhere where they can get help.”

Angry and distraught, Dickson said she won’t rest until her questions about police, the hospital and the jail are answered.

“He was the love of my life. I just hope that he never came through his head injury and doesn’t remember dying in there.”

With files by Jane Sims, The London Free Press

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