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'No apology' to detainee's mother | |
(about 7 hours later) | |
The mother of a teenager who choked to death in a secure unit told an inquest she had been given no support by the authorities and no apology. | |
Gareth Myatt, 15, choked on his own vomit as three officers held him down at Northamptonshire's Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre in April 2004. | |
His mother Pam Wilton told the inquest: "It has devastated me, it has virtually stopped my life." | |
She said she had received no offers of help from authorities since his death. | |
She had also not received an apology from those in control of youth justice, she told the hearing in Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire. | |
Confused young man | |
"I feel like they couldn't be bothered," she said. | |
Miss Wilton said Gareth was a confused young man with issues about his mixed race. | |
Gareth was held down by three custody officers on his bed in a Home Office approved restraint called a "seated double embrace" after lashing out during an argument. | |
Gareth Myatt was sent to Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre | |
The hold - which involved Gareth being held sat down by officers and his upper body pushed forward - has since been withdrawn from use on the advice of police investigating the death. | |
The inquest, at the Rushden and Diamonds Conference Centre, has heard an argument had started at the centre near Daventry after Gareth refused to clean a toasted sandwich maker used by inmates. | |
Gareth was just three days into a 12-month detention and training sentence at Rainsbrook when he died. | |
He was a vulnerable teenager, just 4ft 10in (1.25m) tall and weighed six and a half stone (41kg), which was why he was sent to Rainsbrook rather than a young offenders institution. | |
Even though the techniques used to subdue inmates at the centre were approved and taught by the Home Office, their use was meant to have been reviewed on an ongoing basis. | |
In the days after Gareth's death it was found that a review of the Physical Control in Care (PCC) techniques used on children had not been carried out in the four years before the incident. | |
The hearing continues. | |
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