Rare hearings wrap on alleged mishandling of suicide by military police

File photo — The facade of the former headquarters of the Department of National Defence pictured in Ottawa, Wednesday April 3, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA — It’s the final day of hearings into the tragic death of a Canadian defence analyst in 2024, launched over allegations military police mishandled a welfare check on the day he took his own life at his Ottawa home.

The rare public interest hearings, which have been taking place since April 20, are the first in more than a decade.

They were called by Canada’s military police watchdog due to the seriousness of the allegations and questions about whether the military police system failed to help Master Cpl. Shaun Orton.

His wife, Sarah Orton, accuses military police of unreasonably delaying a welfare check for some six hours after she first called to raise concerns about her husband’s well-being. She also alleges they violated protocol at the scene by failing to attempt resuscitation.

“It hurts immensely knowing that on Shaun’s last day, I tried everything to help him, and institutions could have done more,” she told the hearing on April 22.

“This changed my life, and it impacted not only me but my family and military family. I have friends across Canada who still serve and there is a fear that their mental health call may not be taken seriously.”

Military police said during the hearings that his wife’s initial call did not lay out the full seriousness of the situation, that they were understaffed and that Orton appeared dead when they arrived.

When Sarah Orton first called military police around 9 a.m. on April 21, 2024, she said her husband had messaged her throughout the night that he was “spiralling out of control and needing help.” She was out of town at the time and requested a mental health check on him, according to call transcripts.

She also told police that he had stopped responding for two hours and would not answer his phone.

Orton had deployed to Afghanistan as infantry and had previously attempted suicide in 2019. The couple went through trial separation just a few weeks before his death.

Sgt. Mathew Young, who handled her calls and was one of two officers to arrive on the scene, told her on the first call that unless Orton had explicitly indicated he had a plan to kill himself, “our hands are kind of tied,” since military police “don’t typically respond” in those instances. He gave her a phone number for his unit.

She told the hearing she felt she was “being dismissed that morning and that I was not being taken seriously.” She said that after her call to the unit number went to voice mail, she called Ottawa police, who then raised the matter with the military police again.

Sarah then called military police again at 2:46 p.m. and convinced them to do a wellness check, which happened around 3:30 p.m.

Orton was about a month away from being medically released from the military, she explained in one of the calls.

Sarah alleged before the panel that military police froze when they found her husband and were unsure of what to do. She said she learned of his death — which she described as a “dagger to my heart” — from the hospital and not the military.

Orton had hanged himself and his body was still warm when discovered. His wife’s counsel said military police made no attempt to resuscitate him and CPR was not performed until civilian emergency services arrived on scene, even though policy states the officers must try to save a person’s life unless death is “clearly evident.”

Counsel for Sgt. Young said the Ottawa detachment is chronically understaffed and was under instruction to respond only if a military member explicitly indicated they intended to end their own life. Counsel also said the wellness check policy was outdated and unclear.

Sgt. Young testified he did not feel the situation was urgent during the initial call, did not know about Orton’s past suicide attempt and did not believe there was anything he could do once he and the other officer arrived on the scene.

“There was nothing there that immediately prompted me to think that, especially with my previous experience with him, that he was going to be a harm to himself,” Sgt. Young testified on April 23.

“We don’t have a crystal ball. We never know when people are going to do something like that.”

Sgt. Young also said there was “nothing significant” in his training covering welfare checks, and training on sudden deaths was not “very in-depth.”

He said that when he and the other officer arrived at the property around 3:30 p.m., they examined the outside of the property before entering and finding Orton’s body. He said that his face, hands and feet looked purple and his body was still warm but without a pulse.

Ottawa police arrived at the scene some 10 minutes later and Orton was declared dead at hospital a few hours later.

Public interest hearings do not result in disciplinary judgments but are meant to establish whether military police acted appropriately under the circumstances, and to produce policy recommendations.

These hearings are set to end today with a policy roundtable.

The last public interest hearing took place in 2015 — a probe into the 2008 suicide of Cpl. Stuart Langridge, whose parents had been denied access to a copy of the investigation report.

The next such probe, which is expected as soon as this fall, will probe a botched active shooter drill on a base in Montreal.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2026.

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If you or someone you know is in crisis or struggling with mental illness, here are some resources that are available.

Canada Suicide Crisis Helpline (Call or text 988 or visit 988.ca)

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (1-800-463-2338)

Kids Help Phone [phone])

If you need immediate assistance call 911 or go to the nearest hospital.