Ryan Donard death inquest to probe reported fatal flight into frigid northern Sask. river

Not much is publicly known about the winter morning when Ryan Donard disappeared and presumably died near Stony Rapids, Sask.

At the top of the list of unanswered questions is why, after reportedly fleeing from the RCMP, the 31-year-old man would have gone into the frigid waters of the Fond du Lac River, never to be seen again until his body was quietly recovered five months later.

On Sept. 9, a coroner's inquest will begin to probe the details of Donard's 2017 encounter with RCMP and offer Donard's family a chance at some of those answers.

Donard's father, Alexander Donard, says he doesn't believe the police's account of that day.

"I know him 100 per cent. He wouldn't go into that [river]..." Alexander said Monday. "You're.... taking the risk of your life walking into the river there. In the cold. It's -40 at that time."

If not that, then what?

"That's what we're trying to find out through the inquest," Alexander said. 

What we know so far

According to the RCMP, on February 25, 2017, officers were called to a home in Stony Rapids, Sask., because of a complaint.

When they arrived, Donard fled on foot and headed into the river, police said. 

"The male subsequently ended up in a body of water and disappeared beneath the surface," said an RCMP news release. 

Donard reportedly never came out of the water. Alexander said the river would have still been flowing at that time of year.

Body spotted by float plane

Earlier this year, CBC News verified with the RCMP that Donard's body was found five months after his disappearance, on June 25, about four kilometres downstream and west of Stony Rapids.

The RCMP never publicly reported the body's recovery. The first public confirmation came in a press release issued earlier this month by Saskatchewan's Ministry of Justice, which handles communications for the province's coroner's service.

"A body was spotted in Fond du Lac Lake by a float plane and recovered from the water. The body was positively identified as that of Ryan Donard, age 31," according to the news release.

Coroner's inquests, which are not criminal trials but rather fact-finding missions, are held for one to four of the following reasons:

• To clarify what caused a death.
• To inform the public of circumstances surrounding a death.
• To bring dangerous practices to light.
• To educate the public to prevent deaths in the future.

Asked which of those reasons triggered Chief Coroner Clive Weighill's decision to hold an inquest into Donard's death, a spokesperson for the ministry cited only the second reason, "to inform the public of circumstances surrounding a death."

Donard's death was investigated by the Prince Albert Police Service, with an investigation observer (appointed by the Ministry of Justice) reviewing that work.

Coroner's inquests are typically called when investigators, in consultation with Crown prosecutors, have already decided that no officers involved in the death broke the law.

A full autopsy, complete with toxicology results, was conducted on Donard's body, the ministry spokesperson said. 

Alexander said those results were not shared with him, nor was he allowed to view his son's decomposed body.  

Town hall to host inquest

The Donard inquest will take place at the town hall in Black Lake, population 1,300. The community is located 21 km southeast of Stony Rapids.

It's by far the most remote inquest hosted by the coroners service in years.

Inquests typically take place in the community where a person died, but "after consulting with the family, it was decided that the inquest would be held in Black Lake," the ministry spokesperson said. 

Alexander said his son was from Black Lake and a member of the Black Lake Denesuline First Nation and that it's important to him that the entire community hear what happened to his son. 

There will not be a remote video link to the proceeding, the ministry spokesperson has confirmed. 

Most inquests take place in Saskatoon, Regina or another regional centre. That's because many previous inquests have centred around people who died while in custody at a correctional centre or prison.