Inquest into girl's 2022 school-bus death hears from school, police, medical witnesses

WARNING: This story contains distressing details

A coroner's inquest into the death of a 13-year-old girl following a school-bus incident more than two years ago heard Monday how her school, police and her family doctor all tried to help her in the months leading up to her death.

The Department of Justice and Public Safety announced in September that it would hold an inquest into the death of Hailey Pierce, who died at the Moncton Hospital on April 13, 2022, from injuries she suffered on her way home from Dorchester Consolidated School the previous day.

Hailey was sitting with a friend at the back of the bus when she suddenly stood up, opened the back door and jumped out, the inquest heard.

Deputy chief coroner Michael Johnston and a jury made up of three men and two women are publicly hearing evidence from witnesses to determine the facts surrounding the teenager's death.

The jurors, selected Monday morning from 44 prospective jurors, will also have the opportunity to make recommendations aimed at preventing deaths under similar circumstances.

'There was a lot of people that she could turn to'

School principal June Leger told the Moncton courtroom Hailey "did struggle."

Usually it involved other students at the K-8 school, she said, without elaborating.

But the school provided special accommodations, including a quiet place Hailey could go if she was having a conflict with another student or was feeling overwhelmed.

Still, "when it comes to mental health, schools aren't always equipped to … help the students as much as they need," said Leger. So the school, which has about 100 pupils, applied to the province for a counsellor through the integrated service program.

Hailey also had a regular check-in meeting with her resource teacher and with the behaviour mentor assigned to her classroom, she said.

"So there was a lot of people that she could turn to," Leger said.

Everything the school could do for her, it was doing, she said.

Gave teacher thumbs up before boarding bus

Lisa Wells, who was the guidance and resource teacher at the time, testified she saw improvements in Hailey, that the teen who used to leave the school property regularly was instead using the tools provided.

"She would either identify to me or identify to her mom if she needed to talk to her [child and youth] counsellor," she said.

 "She would come to my space in the resource room a lot and just say, 'I just need a minute.' And I always gave her the option of, if she needed to talk or if she didn't need to talk."

Wells fought backtears when she recalled how Hailey came to her resource room on the day in question. "She didn't say there was any major issue that day or conflict or anything," she said.

When she saw her again, before Hailey got on the bus, Wells asked if she was still doing OK, and the teen gave her a thumbs up, she said.

Last visit with doctor 'positive'

Sackville Const. David Michael Monkman testified police responded to six calls involving Hailey in the six months before her death, all of which involved her wanting to hurt herself or being suicidal.

Police intervention ranged from bringing her home to family to having her transported by ambulance to hospital for further assessment, he said.

The latest call was just a month before the bus incident, said Monkman. Hailey left home on foot, was located and brought back to her parents, who took her to the hospital.

Dr. Bruno Chiasson, Hailey's family physician, said he noticed an increase in reports about the teen's visits to the emergency department and reports from the psychiatrist on-call around November 2021. He contacted her in January 2022 to make sure she was OK.

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it was a phone visit, he said. A followup in February was also over the phone, but he met with her and her mother in person in March.

"From memory, I felt like the interaction went well," said Chiasson, whose mental health appointments usually last 15 to 30 minutes. "I had, like, kind of a positive feeling at the end of interaction with her."

There was nothing alarming or concerning, he said.

School bus driver recounts that day

Michael McIntyre, a school bus driver for the Anglophone East School District, said he was driving Hailey and 35 other students home from Dorchester Consolidated on April 12, 2022.

It was a normal day, he said. "Nothing that I would consider out of the ordinary."

Hailey, whom he described as very quiet and usually wearing earbuds, listening to music, was sitting in the back seat, on the passenger side.

McIntyre was driving along Woodlawn Road, travelling about 53 kilometres an hour, when he heard an alarm, indicating the emergency exit at the back of the bus was open. He looked in his rearview mirror, saw the door was open and pulled over.

McIntyre rushed to the back to see what was going on. A student told him Hailey had jumped from the bus, and McIntyre, seeing her on the road, called 911. 

McIntyre, who performed CPR until first responders arrived, told the jury the emergency door can be opened from the inside by raising the handle to a vertical position.

It's designed to be easily opened by a child in case of an emergency, he said.

The bus underwent a mechanical inspection by the Department of Transportation and Public Safety and was deemed "fully operational," according Monkman, the RCMP officer.

The police investigation concluded no criminal act was involved, he said.

Severe traumatic brain injury

Coroner David Farrow determined Hailey's cause of death was severe traumatic brain injury and ruled it was a suicide. He did not perform an autopsy, he said, as the death occurred during the pandemic, and her family planned to donate her organs. He based his opinion on the medical information he received, he said.

Dr. Dhany Charest, a neurosurgeon at the Moncton Hospital, said he knew right away that Hailey's injuries were "most likely not survivable."

Although she had been stabilized at the Sackville Hospital first before being transferred, which is critical, she had no signs of brain activity and early signs of brain swelling, he said.

Charest waited until morning to see if there was any improvement, but declared Hailey dead at 11:24 a.m., he said as her mother and other members of her family looked on from the front row of the courtroom.

Contagious smile

According to her obituary, she was "an amazing girl, full of life and was vibrantly colourful in all aspects of it."

"She enjoyed being physically active, being around horses and spending time with her grandparents and with her right-hand man and brother, Dexter.

"She had a smile that was contagious, a laugh that was intoxicating and she loved to make people laugh."

The community held a walk to honour her.

The New Brunswick Coroner Service is an independent fact-finding agency that may not make any finding of legal responsibility.

The inquest resumes Tuesday at 9 a.m. and is scheduled to continue until Friday.