A Guelph woman spent much of Wednesday sitting in a courtroom, waiting for her son’s bail hearing and what she believed would be his release from custody. Hours passed as she watched case after case pass through with nary a word about her son.
Then came a phone call from the Rockwood OPP station, played over the courtroom speaker, she recalls. An officer told the court Nathaniel Schofield had been taken to Guelph General Hospital in medical distress.
What the court wasn’t told, and what Faye Dzikewich soon learned, was that her son had been dead for hours. But she still has no idea what happened to him.
“There's a lot of unanswered questions that I'm struggling with,” she told GuelphToday Thursday morning. “None of this is making sense.”
Details from the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) are scarce at this point, which is standard for the agency that looks into the conduct of police officers in instances involving death, serious injury, sexual assault and/or the discharge of a firearm at a person.
A news release from the SIU states a 36-year-old man was arrested in Arthur on Tuesday around 8:30 p.m. He was taken to the North Wellington Operations Centre in Teviotdale before being transferred to the Rockwood detachment that same night.
On Wednesday morning the man was observed in "medical distress" in his holding cell. First aid was administered and he was rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:20 a.m.
The SIU didn’t release the man’s name, but Dzikewich confirms it was her son.
“Fishing was his passion. He taught all his children how to fish. That was probably the biggest highlight with his kids,” said Dzikewich, noting he had six children between the ages of two and 15. “He's a music lover. He loves Led Zeppelin. He loves sports.”
Prior to his arrest, she said her son had no known health issues.
The night of his arrest, Schofield was involved in a dispute with the mother of three of his children, explained Dzikewich.
As he had no criminal record, she anticipated he would be released on his own recognizance and would need a ride home, which is what led to her attending court on Wednesday morning.
She said she’d asked court officials several times when her son’s matter would be dealt with but was simply told she’d have to wait. Then the phone call came from the Rockwood OPP station.
“They told the judge they were sorry that Nathaniel Schofield would not be appearing in court today, that he was rushed to Guelph General Hospital for medical attention and they made it sound like he was alive and okay,” the woman recalls.
She ran out of the courtroom and, before reaching the front doors of the courthouse, got a call from the SIU and was told to wait there until investigators arrived, but they wouldn't say why.
“I started crying on the phone and saying, what's wrong? Is my son okay? Is my son okay? … I started screaming, did he die? Is something wrong? And they said, we're on our way and basically hung up,” Dzikewich said, adding she soon received a phone call from her son's girlfriend saying he'd died. “I collapsed in the parking lot. I just screamed and cried and bawled. I couldn't even talk.”
When she officially learned of her son’s death, Dzikewich asked to see his body in order to say goodbye. At that point, she said she was told his body had already been taken to Toronto for an autopsy.
According to the SIU news release, that autopsy is scheduled for Friday.
“There's something seriously wrong here,” Dzikewich said. “I'm in court all day waiting, thinking I'm going to pick my son up at a bail hearing and he's in the hospital dead for hours before.
“And his body's gone without (investigators) even talking to me.”
