Inquest into death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet hears and sees woman's final moments

Regis Korchinski-Paquet's father Peter Korchinski, left to right, sister Renee Korchinski, lawyers Knia Singh and Silvia Argentina Arauz, brother Reece Korchinski and first cousin Tyrell Beals say a prayer around a memorial in Toronto on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio

Regis Korchinski-Paquet expressed difficulty breathing and reported losing control in a fight with her family in a series of agitated 911 calls shortly before she fell to her death from a 24th-floor balcony while police were inside her home, a coroner’s inquest heard Thursday.

Some of the 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman’s final moments were laid bare as jurors watched a compilation video that overlaid the recordings of five 911 calls and two police microphones with CCTV footage from the hallway outside her home and video from a police cruiser on May 27, 2020.

The calls made to 911 over roughly half an hour late that afternoon, including three by Korchinski-Paquet herself, brought six police officers and two paramedics to the west Toronto building in short succession.

Korchinski-Paquet’s mother, Claudette Beals, was the first to call at 5:13 p.m., telling the operator she needed police immediately because her son and daughter were fighting. Shouting could be heard in the background as Beals paced in the hallway.

Over the course of the 12-minute call, which overlapped with some of the others, Beals knocked on a neighbour’s door, shouted at her children that police were coming, and eventually told the operator that the siblings had an argument and “a fight broke out.”

“My daughter had a seizure this morning, and so this is how basically it all started,” she said.

“I just want the both of them out of my house. I don’t want no contact with neither one of them again.”

Meanwhile, Korchinski-Paquet made her first call to 911 at 5:15 p.m., breathing heavily as she told the operator she was being attacked and needed police immediately.

“I can’t breathe!” she shouted, prompting the operator to tell her to catch her breath and explain what happened.

“My brother just attacked me,” she said before the call was transferred to the paramedic service. The call ended shortly after the operator confirmed emergency crews were on the way.

In two more calls at 5:22 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., Korchinski-Paquet said her brother and mother attacked her after she told her brother to turn down the TV.

“My brother just jumped up and started punching me in my head and choked me, and my mom jumped in and started attacking me as well,” she said in the earlier of the two calls. When asked if they had weapons, she said the pair “pulled out knives” but couldn’t say where the knives were now.

“I broke two bottles because I got so angry that I threw them at them in the hallway. I could not control myself,” she said.

Korchinski-Paquet, who paced up and down the hallway in the security footage, also told the operator she had epilepsy, had experienced a seizure and wasn’t feeling well.

Her brother, Reece Korchinski, called 911 at 5:17 p.m. as he took refuge in the stairwell by the apartment.

Korchinski told the operator his sister started the fight but that he defended himself and managed to get the knives out of her hands before leaving the home and getting his fiancée and their children to do the same.

“My mom was trying to control me and my sister from arguing, but obviously once my sister pulled out the knife, there’s no controlling that,” he said.

He noted his sister’s epilepsy several times, adding she’d had two seizures that day and had “clearly” not calmed down afterward.

“My sister, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, because tonight she’ll apologize to me if I don’t end up going to jail for trying to protect myself and my family,” he said.

An agreed narrative read at the inquest earlier this week said Korchinski-Paquet had a history of seizures from epilepsy and often experienced confusion, “physically and verbally abusive behaviour,” and temporary amnesia in their wake. She had two seizures the morning of the day she died, inquest counsel said.

A neurologist who examined Korchinski-Paquet’s records after her death testified that in the years before her death, she showed symptoms in keeping with postictal delirium or postictal psychosis on several occasions. Both are mental states that can follow seizures.

Dr. Julien Hébert, who also watched the video as part of his review, said Korchinski-Paquet sounded distressed and repetitive in the recordings, as though she couldn’t remember her earlier calls.

Inquest counsel Roger Shallow warned jurors Thursday that the recordings would be difficult to see and hear, as he offered sympathies to Korchinski-Paquet’s grieving family.

“I take no shame in sharing with you that, in compiling this and watching it once it came together, I wept, and I’ll probably weep again tonight,” he said.

“To the family of Regis: This video is going to depict your daughter, your sister, your auntie, your loved one in the few final moments before this tragedy occurred, both in visual and in sound. My heart bleeds at the thought of the agony viewing this might cause you.”

Const. Adam Vandenbrink was the first to arrive at the building at 5:20 p.m. and was told to wait for backup, according to the narrative. Const. Shane Beaudoin was second, and the two went up together at 5:29 p.m. Const. Brian Villeneuve followed suit about a minute later.

Constables Glenn Weddell and Frances Mallinger arrived at 5:31 p.m. and both had wireless microphones that captured heavily muffled and distorted audio from the scene. Two paramedics, Jessica Smitheram and Ronald Warzek, got there around the same time. Const. Christopher Beninger was the last at the scene at 5:36 p.m.

On the CCTV video, the officers can be seen arriving in waves, with the first few appearing to talk to Korchinski-Paquet and her mother by the elevators sometime before Korchinski-Paquet’s third call to 911. There was no sound in that portion of the video.

Another conversation appeared to take place once Villeneuve arrived after her third call.

Korchinski-Paquet went into the apartment at 5:35 p.m., and several first responders went in and out between then and 5:41 p.m., as did her mother and brother.

At one point, a voice can be heard saying Korchinski-Paquet reported experiencing seizures. “She’s quite hard to reason with,” the voice said as shouting could be heard in the background. “She’s a little erratic.”

Korchinski-Paquet fell from the balcony around 5:39 p.m., the narrative said.

Around that time on the video, a radio called for an ambulance, “ASAP.”

Soon after, Korchinski-Paquet’s mother yelled “No!” then repeatedly sobbed “oh my God” as she came out of the apartment and walked up and down the hallway, at one point appearing to pound on the neighbour’s door.

A voice can be heard urging her to sit down and catch her breath before saying, “I got you.”

Korchinski-Paquet’s death, which came days after the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man from Minneapolis, shook the city. Thousands of protesters took to Toronto’s streets to demand change to policing in the weeks that followed.

Ontario’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, eventually cleared Toronto police of wrongdoing in Korchinski-Paquet’s death, finding it happened as she was trying to move from her apartment balcony to the one next door.

The inquest will not look into the investigations conducted by various watchdog organizations, but its scope includes how police and first responders are informed about epilepsy.

A Toronto police employee is set to continue testifying Friday on the logistics of 911 call centres.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2026.

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press