Vancouver/Abbotsford – The BC Coroner’s report confirmed a Abbotsford teenager whose death cast scrutiny on the province’s practice of placing at-risk foster children in hotels deliberately jumped from a hotel window.
The Coroners report on the death of Alex Gervais, an 18-year-old who was placed by the Children’s Ministry in an Abbotsford Super 8 motel after his group home was closed, was confirmed as a suicide.
The report goes on to state that Gervais had non-lethal concentrations of cocaine and other drugs in his system before he died after deliberately jumping through a fourth-floor window of the motel in September 2015.
The report says the teenager was “very sensitive and fearful of rejection” and says he threatened to kill himself in January 2013 but a hospital assessment concluded he had “zero risk of suicide.”
Immediately after Gervais’ death, the ministry said it housed children in hotel only in extreme circumstances.
It was later learned that a January report revealed 117 foster children had been placed in hotels between November 2014 and October 2015.
