No charges for responders

Photo: Contributed

British Columbia's criminal justice branch says no charges have been approved against Delta police officers and paramedics who failed to file a report with the Children's Ministry about a child in need of protection.

The Criminal Justice Branch says in a release that the RCMP investigated and submitted an opinion recommending charges of failing to file the report in a case involving 17-year-old Paige Gauchier.

The branch says a review of the available evidence suggests there is no substantial likelihood that the officers or paramedics would be convicted of the offence involving an incident on Jan. 22, 2011.

The branch says Gauchier was intoxicated and had a bleeding nose when she walked into a gas station in Delta at 2 a.m. and said she'd been assaulted by six girls but refused to go to hospital on the recommendation of paramedics.

It says police called her uncle, with whom she was living in Vancouver, and that he asked she be sent to his home by taxi, but neither officers nor paramedics contacted the Children's Ministry.

Gauchier was 19 when was found dead from a drug overdose in a public washroom in the Downtown Eastside in 2013, and the then-children's representative said in a report two years later that multiple agencies involved with the teen had failed to collaborate and help her.