Thomas Hamp saskatoon stabbing emily sanche, mental health issue
A family in Saskatoon says the health care system failed their son for months before he was stabbed to death in February.
Thomas Hamp didn't get a psychiatric evaluation for more than a month after he stabbed someone.
Bryan Hamp says his son Thomas Hamp's girlfriend sent him a five-page timeline the day before she was stabbed to death. It shows how Thomas's mental health had deteriorated.
It's a crime for Thomas to kill someone. Police found out that the victim was his girlfriend, Emily Sanche.
It was Bryan's hope that Sanche, who graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a degree in psychology, would help get Thomas into the hospital and get him checked out for his increasingly weird behavior.
Thomas' parents, Bryan and Sandi, were worried about his growing delusions and frustrated that they couldn't get the medical help they thought he needed both before and after Sanche was stabbed by Thomas.
A month after the stabbing, Thomas was put on suicide watch at the Saskatoon jail. Even though the court had ordered him to go to the main psychiatric hospital in the province, there wasn't enough room for him there.
CBC reached out to Sanche's parents, and they gave them a statement.
We want to know what happened to our daughter before she died in a tragic accident, but we think it's not right for anyone, even the CBC, to say anything until there is more evidence from the police investigation.
He made the timeline on Saturday, February 19, and Bryan planned to take his 25-year-old son into the emergency room at Royal University Hospital on Sunday, February 20, so Sanche made it. It would have been their son's third visit to the ER since December.
Sanche sent Bryan a text at 4:48 p.m. CST on Feb. 19 that said she had written the document and sent him a link to it on Google Drive.
But Bryan didn't get to go to the hospital with his son.
Early on Sunday morning, Bryan said he got a call from a friend.
"Whatever was going on, it happened. Someone dialed my number and I didn't hear her. Thomas was yelling in the background that they were going to kill him. Help me get them. I'll remember that for the rest of my life."
Bryan called 911 and went to the young couple's house on Main Street. They were having a fight. Both had been taken to the hospital already. Thomas also cut his own neck and stabbed himself in the chest, Bryan said.
In 25 days, Sanche, who had been in a Master of Counseling psychology program for a year, died of a heart attack. Thomas was charged with aggravated assault at first. On Monday, police said the charge had been changed to second-degree murder.
"This could have been done without. Everything, "Sandi: I said the same thing.
"Because no one would listen to these two kids, their lives are over and they have been ruined. There should be some accountability for this."
'They were a very good couple'
In high school, Thomas met Sanche, and after they graduated, they started to date. At the University of Saskatchewan, she earned a psychology BA with high honors. She then went on to earn her master's degree at the University of Lethbridge. Thomas had just earned a double degree in psychology and sociology.
There were a lot of ideas that Sandi thought were similar to her own. Sandi said that they were very socially responsible and progressive.
"They were a great couple who were very in love with each other," says the teacher.
It was the summer of 2021 when the two young people moved in together. Bryan told me that his son started having "intrusive thoughts" in the late fall.
Bryan: "Just a lot of thoughts that were not true."
"In December, he talked to her and told her that he was having these weird thoughts. Then, she and Thomas told us."
It starts in December, when Thomas started to remember things that never happened. These included being bullied and people making up stories about him being a predator.
CBC looked at the timeline, as well as texts that were both dated and time-stamped.
By the end of the month, Thomas thought he was being watched and that he had a fight with police, the document said.
She heard him say that someone was breaking into their house at night and moving things around, and that people he knew had been replaced by "fakes."
Sanche took Thomas to the emergency room at Royal University Hospital on December 18 and then again on February 9 because he was sick. According to the timeline, the first trip was made after Thomas's psychologist talked to him. She thought he was in a "mental health crisis," and he should get checked out at a hospital.
"She was able to go in with him and she tried to explain what was going on, but she was, in her words, not paid attention to."
People who work in psychology or psychiatry talked to Thomas at different times, but it never went further than those first talks. It made things even more complicated for him because he already saw a psychologist and took medication for OCD (OCD).
"Doctors told him it was very bad OCD and to keep taking his medicine. And the second person said there was no sign of psychosis, and so far everything looked good "Bryan said that.
Sandi said that her son didn't always act like he was in trouble.
"He's so good at talking that people don't pay attention to what he says," said the woman.
"Many of us who are close to his heart could see signs of his stress or anger building up in him. It's true that someone who doesn't know him can't just read his mind."
They just wanted their son to be looked after. Sandi said that was all they wanted.
"We hoped he'd be taken to the Dube Center, where he could be safe and get professional help. See a psychiatrist to figure out what's going on, so that these things could be taken care of medically first, and then through counseling, so that they could be fixed ""She said."
At that point, our goal was to get him into a home where he could be cared for.
Between December and February, Thomas had been to the emergency room twice, talked to a psychiatrist on the phone, seen his family doctor, and been seeing a counsellor, among other things.
"This is a young man who needs help, but we just want someone else finally to listen. They didn't, either "Sandi said that, and I agree.
Sandi said that there was no sign that Thomas was going to be violent toward himself or anyone else, and that was the case.
People in charge are stuck in a limbo place
The Hamps say that even after their son was killed, the health care system still doesn't help them.
The Saskatoon Correctional Center has kept Thomas there since he was arrested in February. There were no beds at Saskatchewan Hospital in North Battleford, so he was taken to the jail instead. A provincial court judge had ordered that he be sent there.
"These people think this boy had what we think was a psychotic break. He was hurt. His girlfriend was killed in a car accident "Sandi: I said the same thing.
"Afterward, they took him to the correctional center, where they put him in a jail cell. He was still not mentally stable from the psychosis or something. There were a lot of things that started because of it So it went from a scary situation to adding more and more trauma. He has been in the corrections center for a month now. He's in a medical unit where he's being kept safe from harm."
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) said that it can't give out specific information about any patient or admission that it has made.
There are 188 psychiatric rehabilitation beds at the Saskatchewan Hospital North Battleford, which is the main inpatient mental health facility in the province. There are also 96 rooms in a secure wing for offenders who have mental health problems. 48 of the 96 prison beds and 166 of the 188 non-prison beds were working on April 1.
It's not yet possible to use all the beds at the hospital because of things like patient flow, patient placement assessments, and hiring.
"This number changes all the time because of discharges, new admissions, and COVID case management," Winkel said.
Bryan didn't like this.
A man said that he was seeing that mental health problems were very common, but there was no way to help them because there wasn't enough money.
"The way we treat the weak and the people with mental illnesses is how we're judged as a group. Failure: We aren't getting the job done!"