The Weyburn Police Service responded to several wellbeing checks last week, with one incident resulting in someone taken to the hospital in critical condition.
WPS Corporal Ryan Chernaiwsky says being called for wellbeing checks is not uncommon, and typically stems from a lack of communication for an unusual amount of time.
“That was the case on April 21st. An acquaintance of an individual said, ‘I've had a number of contacts with this individual and then it abruptly stopped’. It had been a few days, they requested us to just see if we could locate and check on this individual.”
Corporal Chernaiwsky says after other avenues of investigation, police ended up checking the persons residence where they located them in critical condition.
“EMS attended the scene and worked extensively and then ended up subsequently transporting them to the general hospital.”
He says anytime similar circumstances arise, WPS can be called to conduct these wellbeing checks and ensure the person is safe.
“In this case there had been regular communication with this individual between an acquaintance or friend. And then all of a sudden it abruptly stopped, further attempts to communicate with them as well as persons that they knew had failed. So they had checked through other people to try to get a hold of this person. Nothing was working, knocking on the door, that kind of thing. So after a reasonable amount of time, day or two, in this case, it happened to be three, they phoned us and we took it from there.”
In total, the WPS responded to 78 calls for service during the week of April 21st to April 27th. These calls led to a resulting 24 charges laid, with 18 under the Criminal Code of Canada, five under the Traffic Safety Act, and one under the Summary Offence Procedures Act.