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 News from Around the Americas | May 2007 
Canadian Called Victim of Alcohol-Induced Accident
 Marina Jiménez & Katherine Harding - theglobeandmail.com
With a report from Dawn Walton
| | Jeff Toews, seen in a family photo with his wife, Natalie, and son, Dawson, was severely injured in Mexico Sunday night. |
A Canadian man who is brain-dead after suffering serious injuries at a posh Cancun resort was definitely the victim of an alcohol-induced accident and not a beating by hotel security guards, says the Mexican investigator in charge of the case.
Security guards found Jeff Toews, a 34-year-old oil-industry salesman from Grande Prairie, Alta., unconscious at the Moon Palace Golf and Spa Resort around 3 a.m. Monday after he fell down stairs and landed on concrete, Bello Melchor Rodriguez y Carillo, Attorney-General for the state of Quintana Roo, told The Globe.
The Mexican embassy in Canada provided The Globe with a two page statement that gave this account of the incident:
Mr. Toews had been drinking with his wife and a group of other couples who had all travelled together on vacation to the Moon Palace. Security guards asked an intoxicated Mr. Toews to leave the hotel disco at 1:30 a.m., and escorted him to his room with his wife. His wife fell asleep, but he slipped out at 1:50 a.m., returned to the bar, went back to his room, and then back to the bar at 2:20 a.m., only to be urged by his friends to return to his room.
At about 3 a.m., a night watchman saw a man in his underwear standing inside the glass balcony of a room. He then saw the man climb over the balcony and start running toward another building.
Another security guard ran to the second floor, but lost track of the man. He heard a loud thud and then found Mr. Toews on the floor, bleeding from the head.
He radioed the security guards' control room to have them call a Mexican Red Cross ambulance, which transported Mr. Toews to the Hospital of the Americas. Mr. Toews arrived in "cardio-respiratory arrest, with possible severe craneo-encephalic trauma and blunt abdominal trauma."
These details were provided exclusively to The Globe in a two-page statement based on an initial investigative report.
"In this case, we are really sorry for that, but as you can see, it was an accident. This person was having a good time and the security guards tried to put him back to his room, he left again after his wife was sleeping, and returned twice to the bar. Something happened and he fell down," said Emilio Goicoechea, Mexico's ambassador to Canada.
The Toews family does not believe this account, and has insisted the head and back injuries came from a severe beating, maybe at the hands of hotel security guards. They are accusing Mexican authorities of covering up a crime, the latest in a string of violent incidents involving Canadian tourists in Mexico.
However, Mr. Goicoechea insists Mr. Toews was never conscious to describe his injuries and that nobody in his party witnessed the incident.
"Nobody saw him from his own party, so how could they suggest he had been beaten?" he said. "When the investigators talked to the security guards and friends in his party, there were no contradictions in the accounts. The declarations of the friends, wives and security guards were all the same. The contradictions only came out afterwards."
Mr. Toews's wife found out he was in hospital the next morning when police contacted her.
Mr. Rodriguez, who is at the centre of a controversial investigation of the slaying of a Toronto couple in Cancun last year, also told The Globe that Mr. Toews had cocaine in his blood stream. However, neither a hospital spokeswoman or Mr. Goicoechea could confirm this. "The Attorney-General says he had taken cocaine, but we are still waiting for the toxicological study to be released, so this is not proven," Mr. Goicoechea said.
He added that he is concerned that a string of violent incidents has tarnished Mexico's image as a tourist haven. "We are really concerned about the image Mexico has been suffering that the Canadians don't have security in the country, which is totally not true."
Mr. Toews, whose family found out yesterday morning that he had been declared clinically brain-dead, was due to arrive in Edmonton on a chartered medevac last night accompanied by his wife. A family member is looking after the couple's son Dawson, who turns 2 today.
Mr. Toews's family members told reporters they plan to have him assessed by doctors at Edmonton's University of Alberta hospital. He will then likely be taken off life support and his organs donated.
Embassy Statement: A Toews Timeline
Excerpts from a statement issued by the Mexican embassy yesterday on the case of Albertan Jeff Toews:
1 A patient named Jeffrey Toews arrived from the Moon Palace Hotel in cardio-respiratory arrest, with possible severe craneo-encephalic trauma and blunt abdominal trauma.
2 On the same date, at 7:46 p.m., Mr. Toews' wife, Ms. Natalie Ivonne Campbell, appeared and stated that the victim and she had been in the company of some friends at the disco of the Moon Palace Hotel, hanging out and drinking alcoholic beverages until approximately 1:30 a.m., when one of the security guards told Mr. Toews that he should leave the disco since he had drunk too much. The couple decided to head to their room with a hotel security guard following them. Ms. Campbell stated that as she had also been drinking alcohol, she fell deeply asleep.
3 At approximately 1:50 a.m., Mr. Toews showed up again at the disco, according to a friend. The friend told the rest of the group that he would accompany Mr. Toews back to his room. When he turned around again Mr. Toews was gone, so he left looking for him. When he arrived at Mr. Toews' room, Mr. Toews was closing the door and said goodnight, so both the friend and a security guard left. At about 2:20 am, Mr. Toews showed up again, according to the friend, leaving two minutes later at the urging of the rest of the companions.
4 At about 3 a.m., a security guard noticed "a male in underwear standing inside the balcony of a room." The person "climbed over the glass balcony onto the grass, outside the boundaries of his room. The individual took a step and then suddenly took off running toward the building to his left."
5 Another security guard and a bell boy travelling in a golf cart saw that a guest was running along the second storey of the building near the elevators, so the guard told the bell boy to stop, and they both got out of the cart. The guard told the bell boy that he was going to check to see who this individual was. He climbed the stairs to the second floor, looked down the hall and saw no one. He walked in the direction in which he had seen the person run, and seconds later, from distance of twenty or thirty metres, he heard a loud thud. When he reached the stairs he descended to the first floor, this being at the opposite side of the same building, and upon reaching the bottom looked right and left but saw no one. When he turned around partially, he saw a guest who turned out to be Mr. Toews on the floor, bleeding from the head, and radioed the security guards' control room to have them call an ambulance. |
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