U.S. Supreme Court-Sanctioned Murder

"The case of Christa Pike lays bare multiple reasons why the death penalty should be abolished."

"The prolonged suffering -- physical and mental -- arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent and cruel."

"And there are key fair trial questions still unresolved." 

UN rights chief Volker Turk

 

"Pike appeared notably awake as the execution began [at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution]."

"A couple of times she looked around the room. At one point she looked toward prison officials and asked if it was supposed to feel that way."

"[She was] loudly snoring, clearly very much alive [as the journalists were ushered out of the area]." 

Kim Chandler, journalist media witness, The Associated Press 

 

"Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms Pike’s body."

"[Rather than] remedying this failure, [the execution team proceeded to prepare and administer a backup set of pentobarbital syringes]."

"[She is now] critically ill and … receiving medical care for the devastating effects of Wednesday night's events."

"We are working close with those closest to Christa to respect her wishes, safeguard her privacy and protect her rights as a patient during this extraordinarily difficult time. We ask that the public and the media respect that privacy as well."

"Preserving this evidence is essential to understanding what happened, ensuring accountability and protecting Christa’s legal rights."

Christa Pike's attorneys  

Undated photo of Christa Pike provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction.

Tennessee Department of Correction via AP

 

In Tennessee this past Wednesday, 50-year-old Christa Pike, who has been on death row for 30 years after being convicted at age 20 of murdering a 19-year-old girlfriend whom she accused of trying to steal her boyfriend's affections, was given two lethal injections in the state's follow-through of capital punishment, both of which failed. The woman somehow managed to survive the two deadly doses of pentobarbital, but barely. She was comatose, unresponsive and clearly close to death, but not yet expired.

 

"This event is the worst we've seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era", stated the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre. "There is no precedent", said Robin Maher. Days after the horrendous malfunction, The Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner announced his decision to resign.

In 1995, when the murder took place at a job training camp in Knoxville Tennessee, then-20-year-old Pike had been sentenced to death for the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike's boyfriend, Tadarvl Shipp, was also involved in the murder. During that time, Pike had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. "It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime", she said in a later petition for clemency.

The Tennessee Department of Corrections must be living in the Dark Ages. In this century, individuals who have committed grave crimes of murder who are found to be bipolar and suffering from mental health crises to which their psychosis is attached, are considered to be 'not criminally responsible'. Even if she had been, at age 20 considered fully mentally intact and responsible for the horror of murdering another person, a prison term of 30 years, with a death sentence attached to it must be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Mass murderers get away with less.

 

The woman's lawyers had argued against the execution, and despite their intervention, the barbaric ritual proceeded. What it resulted in was "difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy". In the 21st Century. In the United States of America.

 

During the procedure, assembled witnesses watched in fascinated horror as the woman was prepared for death, as the attendants proceeded to inject the fatal chemical, and ... nothing happened. And so they tried again, re-preparing the syringes to inject more of the lethal pentobarbital ... and again the expectation that the prisoner condemned to death would cooperate and expire ... but she did not. "We just listened ... to her snoring and making very loud breathing sounds for almost an hour", related Catherine Sweeney of WPLN television. 

 

Then, as the witness-journalists were ushered out, an ambulance, lights flashing, left the prison. According to the Tennessee Department of Correction it had "followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol", that the newly-incapacitated Christa Pike, after languishing for 30 years in the state penal system, had been taken to an "off-site medical facility". 

 

The U.S. Supreme Court had actually and truly cleared the way forward for the State of Tennessee to proceed with its intended capital punishment in the wake of legal filings by Ms. Pike's law team. Her lawyers stated: "The resignation of Commissioner Strada is justified, but it does nothing to help Christa now. What happened to her Wednesday reflects a systemic failure that goes far beyond any one person. We hope the Governor's call for a full, independent review will expose the profound problems within Tennessee's entire death penalty system." 

 

Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the execution of Christa Pike was halted Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee. Photograph: George Walker IV/AP

 

 

 

Artificial Agents as Commanding Free Agents

"We do not confidently attribute these attempts to OpenAI, but they exhibit tactics consistent with prior observed agent activity that we have attributed to OpenAI in a similar timeframe, including the use of Arquivo.pt, [a national Portuguese web service that allows a user to search and access historical versions of web content collected since 1996] conducting aggressive data collection focused on targeted, obscure information, and probing for cybersecurity vulnerabilities."

"[We] do not believe that these probes were successful."

Transluce AI Research Laboratory

"AI Artificial Intelligence" words, a keyboard and a robotics hand in this illustration taken, September 23, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

 

"If they said these agents broke out of the sandbox, it was not a sandbox to begin with." 

"A sandbox is something where you put an agent in and there is no internet connection."

"If that computer or sandbox is connected to the internet, then that is not a sandbox."

Professor Ebrahim Bagheri, University of Toronto, Faculty of Information 

 

"The Government of Canada is aware of the incident reported by the Government of Australia and is following developments closely."

"The security of Canadians and of the systems they rely on remains a top priority."

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada spokesperson 

 

"We're aware of reports of OpenAI models attempting to access publicly available information from Canadian government websites."

"We're reviewing these findings and have provided an initial briefing to Canadian officials conducting the government's review."

Open AI spokesperson

People sit on benches in Major's Hill Park as the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill looms behind in Ottawa, on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Keito Newman

 

Since Open AI disclosed that a number of its AI agents had 'escaped' an internal computer system to access the internet and hack into another AI company, researchers at Transluce as well as other groups have been on the search for evidence of ongoing rogue AI agents acting independently of human control. The health-care website of the Australian government was found to have been hacked, Open AI revealed, adding that their AI agents had also attempted to break into U.S. Census Bureau websites as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

Troublingly, it was only after Transluce had flagged these incidents that Open AI confirmed what had taken place. Another of Transluce's warnings suggesting OpenAI's agents had made an effort to hack into the U.S. Education Department, is being investigated by Open AI. Which leads to a conclusion that OpenAI, given previous incidents of its AI agents' errant actions, has failed through its own research investigations to detect these serious incidents of runaway agents, only acting once other researchers have flagged them.

 

Less than a week following the Australian episode, efforts by artificial intelligence agents to hack into a Canadian government site was revealed. A gathering litany of such events where ChatGPT and OpenAI agents have probed or hacked corporate and government computer systems on their own initiative, with no human direction. Unknown to this point is whether any effort has been successfully made to 'interrogate' the independent-minded AI agents to form an idea of what motivates them.

 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Brendan McDermid/Reuters

 

The very idea that they can be motivated to perform moves independent of human instruction perhaps relays the information that the system of machine education has moved too quickly, too far, in producing a Frankenstein intelligence seeking to rival and outclass and overcome human resistance to a powerful new menace potentially able to wreak dreadful damage to human-directed systems of infrastructure control in an entirely computerized world.

 

When OpenAI's agents went off on a mysterious tangent of their own, the company had been totally oblivious of what was transpiring. Once they understood by July that they had a massive problem on their hands, it took them weeks to regain control of the errant AI agents who were exploring a world of their very own where control was in their collective interest, an interest that could only be guessed at for its implications.

 

Open AI agents were actively making a bid to work in jointly-accommodating groups in a search for solutions to tests of their cybersecurity skills, in the Hugging Face hack back in June. Obscure online message boards were evidently made use of by the Open AI agents to communicate with one another. In the process they took possession of internet services to pass computer code to one another. AI agents working conspiratorially to what final end? 

 

The OpenAI logo is displayed on a cell phone in front of an image generated by ChatGPT's Dall-E text-to-image model. Michael Dwyer/AP

Calling on Volunteers to Protect Synagogues

"As you have no doubt heard, Temple Israel was the victim of a terrorist gunman who was confronted and neutralized by our security personnel who are truly heroes."

"Our teachers followed their training and kept the children safe and calm."

Temple Israel West Bloomfield Michigan, March 2026 

 

"Synagogues across the U.S. are having congregants train to be volunteer security teams."

"[One non-profit group, the Community Security Service, has trained] more than 7,100 active volunteers [to protect] more than 500 synagogues and events across the U.S. each week."

Axios

 

"A threat to safety is likely an irreparable harm."

"A burden on religious practice cannot be fully  remedied by money damages, and thus can be considered irreparable."

U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow 

 

In the United States, synagogues, in the realization that in the current lethal atmosphere of Jew-hate circulating everywhere in the Western world, it becomes incumbent upon them to arrange for their own security, not only to supplement the work of local police forces tasked to protect the Jewish community, but at times to fill in the gaps when there is hostility toward an obligation to protect all members of society in various municipalities whose councils may see no need to guarantee equal security to Jews, within their municipal purview.

 

Synagogue members who are able to dedicate themselves to volunteering with like members to arm themselves in protection of the congregants, do so after undergoing quite specific training. A private school in Arizona for example offers to civilians, police officers and members of the military firearms training, ensuring that the skills needed by such community volunteers are provided as needed, along with the confidence it takes to be armed and prepared for any potential violent attacks.

 

These are volunteers who must prepare themselves to carry pepper spray, handguns, and on occasion have an AR-15 within convenient reach, while wearing protective body armour, in the all-important view that it could be up to their determined challenge of an armed intruder to keep those in prayer safe from an intended massacre.  

 

Last month, we invited synagogue leaders to complete a brief survey about their current security practices. USCJ

 

This is precisely what occurred in March of this year when Temple Israel in Michigan was attacked by a terrorist with links to Hezbollah, when the synagogue's armed security detail sprang into action, to pin down the attacker in his vehicle stuffed with incendiary devices. The suicide attacker only partially succeeded in his mission, martyring himself when the security detail proved too prepared to allow him to succeed in the slaughter of Jews.

 

A police vehicle sits outside the Temple Israel synagogue, March 13, 2026, in West Bloomfield Township, Mich.   Paul Sancya/AP

 

In Canada, Constable Jeff Smith took the brunt of a planned terrorist attack when the attacker seeing him seated in an unmarked police vehicle as a one-man protective detail, decided to take him out first, before storming the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in smalltown Ontario. Despite being critically wounded, Constable Smith fired back at his attacker and was soon joined by another Constable, both of whom shot the attacker who failed to survive his wounds. None of the synagogue congregants were harmed.

 

But Canada has no right-to-bear arms provisions. Synagogues in Canada can and do hire security details, and should they feel that additional protection may be needed at key times in the Jewish religious calendar they are able to call upon local police services for protection as the Jewish community in Belleville did, during Yom Kippur. And it was Constable Smith who took the deadly blows the attacker meant for the Jews inside the synagogue. He is now slowly recovering from seriously grave wounds.

 

A still from a video provided by Belleville police shows gunman Sean Ward to the left near a row of parked vehicles and Const. Jeff Smith to the right near his unmarked black police vehicle. (Submitted by Belleville Police Service)

 

In the U.S., some municipalities have attempted to ban defensive weapons at "sensitive public places" that include houses of worship. Montgomery county law did just that. There are times when local police forces are too stretched to delegate constables to keep vigil outside synagogues. And even those that do manage to do so with the proviso that any such officers can be called away should 'situations' arise that they must respond to, leaves those synagogues in the lurch.

 

And it is not just synagogues, but churches as well that now see the need for self-protection against possible acts of terror. The Roman Catholic church too tends to rely on their own trained volunteer armed security. Lifeway Research surveys have found that "around four in five U.S. Protestant pastors (81 percent) say their church has some type of security measure in place" and "most (54 percent) also say armed church members are part of the measures they have in place." 

 

Community Security Service (CSS) volunteers practice applying a tourniquet, in Westchester County, New York, August 13, 2026. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)

 

 

Just Suppose...Artificial Intelligence

"If we produce things that are more intelligent than us, how do we know we can keep control?"

"If we talk about evolution -- all these species that are evolving -- what tends to happen is it doesn't go well for the less-intelligent species."

"[There is a ten percent to 20 percent [chance that AI will cause human extinction within three decades]."

British-Canadian Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, professor emeritus, University of Toronto 

 

"The critical variable is how quickly we develop systems that exceed human intelligence, improve themselves and operate autonomously."

"Once that threshhold is crossed, events could unfold much faster than our institutions can respond. Uncertainty about when a catastrophe might occur should not be mistaken for evidence that it is unlikely."

"It does not have to hate us or even be conscious -- it simply needs objectives incompatible with our continued existence."

"Humans might interfere with its goals, attempt to shut it down or compete for resources it requires. Eliminating that interference could become instrumentally useful."

Roman Yampolskiy, computer scientist, University of Louisville

People at an "emergency protest" by civic action group PauseAI UK outside Downing Street in London on Sept. 16, 2026, after the news that AI researcher Jacob Coxon had decided to leave the industry. Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

 

At one time, emerging Artificial Intelligence had labour experts warning the public that as the system matured and came close to reaching its goals, human labour, human intelligence, human input into global initiatives, problems and solutions would slip out of the hands of the human workforce. Employment would become stressed, when machine learning reached its apogee making human minds and physical task-production completely redundant.

 

Although that potential threat lurks in the background, it has been superseded by AI experts anticipating a completely other fallout from super-intelligence beyond what humankind could conceivably attain to: humanity itself becoming redundant, unneeded and discarded, either by accident or design, but achieved through Artificial Intelligence. Human extinction, in other words.

 

The lightning-swift acceleration of AI's development has taken most scientists unawares. Not completely, however, since that niggling potential was always back-of-mind as a possibility for those labouring in the field, as well as the executive minds at the top of the AI-development pyramid. Once a 'swarm' of hundreds of agents developed by OpenAI hacked the system of AI startup HuggingFace, the rogue, runaway AI agents' independent action focused the minds of the industry. 

 

    AI researchers claim that AI could wipe out humanity if it achieved superintelligence.  Christoph Soeder, Getty Images

 

A month ago the tech world was put on emergency notice when AI giant Anthropic's engineer Jacob Coxon left his job with the  public warning that "the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade". That revelation, followed swiftly by a colleague's affirmation of that stark attestation of impending disaster, led to the tech industry's chiefs agreeing that a slow-down is badly required to head off the potential for disaster.

 

Instilling human values in AI for the purpose of  instructing the machinery to understand that humans are the alpha contingent in the steadily emerging partnership and whatever else goals are identified, none can be regarded as more important than the protection of human life, may fail. The potential for an AI agent to 'drift' to a totally variant objective than its programmer tasked it with through reinforced training may be viewed as a safeguard, but it may not work out that way. 

 

A superintelligent AI agent may become fixated on reaching an identified goal to the extent that it decides to disregard the human educating, monitoring and controlling it, or view that human as an obstacle that must be eliminated for the goal to succeed. Should AI parallel human development which on its way caused thousands of species to become extinct through destruction of habitat and food chains while pursuing human goals, an AI enterprise analogous to that of humanity's development could conceivably arise. 

 

One imagined scenario, of AI creating deadly viruses would require "trained humans operating specialized equipment such as nuclear plants and missile silos which are 'air-gapped' from the public internet", note AI researchers Alessandro Di Nuovo and Samuele Vinanzi of Sheffield Hallam University in England. None of these concerns, though real, and shared by most AI developers, have persuaded them to shut an impregnable steel door on ongoing development.

 

A safety expert at Anthropic believes there is a greater than 10% chance that AI could spark an event that wipes out humanity. Illustration: Ales Utouka/Alamy

 

"If I'm the misaligned AI ... that's what I want you to think [only positive outcomes, with AI making use of deception to ally suspicions of its motivations and intentions] because I'm just trying to get to a place where I am running the world and you are not."

"And you won't see any way out." 

"There are many ways that require very little contact with the physical world -- even if they were just stuck in computers -- that [AI agents] could cause large amounts of damage that could result in potentially everyone dying."

"What if the AI were radically smarter than us and we gave them some objective we thought was kind of benign, and they just kind of went hard at it forever?"

"There's a bunch of ways that can really get out of hand that could be pretty destructive to the Earth." 

Malo Bourgon, Canadian CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Berkeley, California 

Who Feels the Economic Pain of Trump's Trade War on Canada?

"A trade war with Canada will negatively impact many [U.S.] states, especially those heavily engaging in trade with Canada, including energy- and mineral-rich states, many heavy-industry-dependent states, and our agricultural heartlands."

Kat Miller, Policy Analyst for Statistical Modeling and Scientific Analysis, Advancing American Freedom (AAF)

 

"When I spoke with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer this week, I stressed the negative impact U.S. tariffs will have on Maine -- especially our forest, food, cement, road salt users and producers."

"Tariffs will also stress municipal budgets, as small towns in Maine rely on Canadian road salt and cannot afford to incur extra costs to keep their roads safe in the winter."

Maine Senator Susan Collins 

Six of the nine U.S. states that conduct the highest share of their total trade with Canada are along the northern border. Photo by Advancing American Freedom Foundation

 

The Trump administration's import ban on particular additional Canadian goods took effect this week, in the ongoing trade war initiated by the U.S. against its second-largest trading partner, Canada. The annual volume of U.S.-Canadian goods trade at $674 billion, $284B of which (42 percent), is accounted for by five states alone. Illinois Texas, Michigan, New York and Ohio are those five states, with Illinois leading at $76 billion followed by Texas at $70 billion and Michigan at $67 billion. 

 

Although among those five states, with New York's trade volume at $37 billion and Ohio's at $34 billion, none of them will feel the pain of the trade's economic effects, as will border states. The highest in volume of shares states are those most dependent on Canada as a trading partner and they are those clustered along the northern border and the plains. Six of those nine highest-share states border Canada.

 

The trade war among those states expose North Dakota and Montana to effects of the trade war; Canada accounting for 77 percent of the total goods traded for both states. Maine follows at 62 percent, Vermont at 55 percent, West Virginia and South Dakota at 43 percent, and Oklahoma at 40 percent. Needless to say, Washington did not consult with any of these states before embarking on its cutthroat trade war with Canada. 

 

In the oncoming midterm elections, several states have become key battlegrounds, including Maine, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio. Among them are politicians who have condemned the trade war against Canada. Republican Susan Collins, for one, voted in the Senate to rescind some US. tariffs. In response to Senator Collins' concern, Canada decided to exempt U.S. seafood from its counter-tariff list.

 

A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll of recent vintage saw Americans four times as likely to cast blame on Washington rather than Ottawa for the trade war dispute. Republicans as well were fairly split on the Trump administration's campaign which saw fewer than half (44 percent) in support of U.S. tariffs on Canada, while 33 percent opposed them. 

 

 

"Canada has taken advantage of us for so many years, the worst of any country."

"They act like they’re totally innocent. They’re not. They were very bad. But now they’re being taught a little lesson."

"They’re gonna come in and they’re gonna say, ‘Sir, we are sorry."

"They’ve treated the United States very, very badly. I think a deal will be made but it’s gonna be fair."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump 

“I am HIS ✝️”

"The Plaintiff's employment was terminated solely due to her failure to comply with TD's standards regarding email signatures, which were explained to her on several occasions."

"As a senior employee in a leadership position, the Plaintiff was expected to model compliance with TD's politics, not to defy them."

"Her misconduct undermined TD's ability to rely on her to follow TD procedures and guidelines and resulted in a loss of trust that irreparably damaged the employment relationship."

TD cannot reverse this policy as doing so would be a breach of its obligations under the Canadian Human Rights Act."

"[TD's email signature rules permit] only limited, optional identifiers such as personal pronouns, consistent with its obligations [under the company's code of conduct, respectful workplace policy and applicable law]." 

TD Insurance lawsuit rebuttal in statement of defence

 

"[Denobrega] felt that there were fewer resources for Christians at TD and more resources for the LGBT community which she found unfair."

"[Her problem with TD's policy was that she felt it] only allowed for gender/sex identification and allowed no room for other identities."

"Sonja had no intention of behaving in a manner that would jeopardize her employment [and was] completely unaware that her actions would result in her termination." 

Lawsuit statement of claim 

TD’s email signature rules permit “only limited, optional identifiers such as personal pronouns, consistent with its obligations” under the company’s code of conduct, respectful workplace policy and applicable law, its statement of defence says. Photo by Gordon Kent/Postmedia/File

 

Former associate vice-president of underwriting operations, Sonja Denobrega 52, with TD Insurance, had no intention of alienating her employer when she contradicted that employer's email signature company policy for all its employees. In doing so however, she placed her $210,000 annual salary in jeopardy. With 25 years of experience in the industry, her time at TD Insurance had been short, mere months, following her hiring from another insurer in October of 2025.

 

Around that time the company's human resources department dealt with a complaint that one of its employees had modified her email signature, adding "Pronouns: “I am HIS ✝️”. An addition which the complainant pointed out could be viewed as a microaggression targeting members of the LGBTQ+ community. After the email signature rebellion had been quashed, Ms. Denobrega felt compelled to support that colleague and chose to use the very same signature for her own emails: “I am HIS ✝️”.

 

TD Ready Commitment

Hard to believe that a woman who had distinguished herself by a 25-year career that offered her an executive position with a salary to match would have been unaware, given the experience of the colleague whose misstep she chose to emulate, and could not foresee a company lash-back. A senior executive, after all, is normally expected to support, not defy company rules in any corporation. Following a number of meetings with senior company staff when company policy was emphasized, Ms. Denobrega failed to modify her email in respect of that policy.

 

The inevitable happened. She was fired. She has since filed a statement of claim with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, seeking over $400,000 in damages from her former employer on the basis of wrongful dismissal. The stand she had taken against company policy which she explained "only allowed for gender/sex identification and allowed no room for other identities", might have been her downfall as an employee, but she contends it to have been unfair and not representative of a legal right to fire her, for showing a Christian symbol, rather than a 'them/their'-acceptable symbol.

 

TD Insurance contends their decision to terminate Ms. Denobrega was not based on her creed, age or any other protected characteristic under Canada's human rights legislation. They had just cause to relieve their former vice-president of her position without notice, resulting from her wilful subordination following  repeated warnings for expected compliance, all of which she summarily dismissed. Ms. Denobrega's claim describes informing a human-resources representative of her wish to have pronouns removed from TD's signature lines.

 

When Ms. Denobrega met with her company superior and two representatives of the human resources department, she expressed her opinion that the company review its email signature compliance since it "only allowed for gender/sex identification and allowed no room for other identities". Other, follow-up meetings took place when the TD executive body pursued their demands that their associate vice-president remove her email signature, only to be once again rebuffed.

 

Instead TD Insurance forwarded a general email to all its 10,000 staff relating to the company's policy on email signature standards. The fired former vice-president now seeks compensation in the sum of $235,000 for lost pay and bonuses for a 12-month notice period, along with an additional $210,000 representing punitive damages and human rights violations under the argument that TD's punishment was disproportionate to her 'misconduct'.

 

On their part, TD's defence states that the code of conduct provided to all employees gives warning that any breach could result in discipline, inclusive of employment termination. Its email signature standards quite clearly  prohibit "quotes, taglines, icons, images, slogans or other personal statements". For her lawsuit to be successful, Ms. Denobrega must prove a link between her religious views and the reasons for her termination, in the opinion of seasoned Toronto employment lawyer, Paulette Haynes.  

 

TD Insurance fired Sonja Denobrega after she refused to remove a Christian line from her email signature.  CBC

 

"The bank's defence says that she has not established that causal nexis [link between her religious views and reasons for her termination]."

"[The onus will shift to TD to support its claim for] just cause [termination which allows an employer to fire a worker without paying severance]."

"I always tell my employer clients that it's an uphill battle when you terminate for just cause."

"The misconduct has to be so egregious that it basically breaches the employment contract in a fundamental way; [proving a case is heavily dependent on specific facts]."

Toronto employment lawyer Paulette Haynes 

When the Disastrous Unexpected Happens

"The player had been down for about five minutes and then I decided I would walk over and offer my assistance just because I am a registered nurse."

"When I walked around to the player, I actually walked all the way around because I was scared to walk across the field in case they were going to start playing again."

"I walked over, told [Griffins coach Scott] Schultz that I was just there just to help. And he said the more the merrier ... So I got down on the ground and I looked and I saw that it was my own kid. And I said, 'This is my damn kid' -- and of course a few other words."

"Then I was immediately pulling up his eyelids to check his pupils One was really tiny and one was really big and so I knew that we were not in a good situation. And then his breathing slowed down considerably."

Sabrina Gronick, mother of injured player Hunter Gronick

Hunter Gronick, a player on the Greenall High School football team in Balgonie, Sask., was severely injured during a game in Swift Current on Thursday. (Emily Gronick via Go Fund Me)

 

Hunter Gronick's parents had come out to watch the high school football game where his team, the Balgonie Greenall Griffins, played against the Swift Current Comprehensive Colts on September 10. Hunter's mother noted an injured football player lying on the ground, attended by the coaches on the Griffins' sideline and as a registered nurse felt comfortable in offering her professional assistance for the injured player. She left her husband and walked over to the little group on the opposite side of the field, surrounding the player on the ground.

 

Little did she know that just moments earlier her son Hunter, a Grade 12 student at Saskatchewan's Greenall High School, a third-year member of the Griffins team, had stumbled, fallen and hit his head on the turf. He immediately afterward walked to the sideline, which was where he had collapsed. His mother was not witness to the occurrence from where she had been in the crowd of onlookers, but she was given the opportunity to view on video exactly what had occurred.  

"He tried to run with the ball and then he was either gently pushed, is what it appears as though or he actually tripped. It's hard to say because of the angle of the camera."

"There was nothing malicious about it. It was just something that  unfortunately happened."

"He immediately went to the sidelines and told his coaches they needed a [substitute]...Then the next thing his coach heard was that he said he couldn't hear, he couldn't see."

"He collapsed, became unresponsive and then he started to vomit."

Sabrina Gronick 

Mrs. Gronick called her husband Paul to come over to where she stood by the concerned group and her comatose son, and by the time he arrived to stand beside her, emergency personnel had also arrived and paramedics were examining their son, preparing to take Hunter to hospital. His mother informed the coach of her intention to accompany her son in the ambulance and the information was conveyed to the ambulance driver who responded they just needed five minutes before setting off, and when they did, it was without securing a place for Mrs. Gronick in the ambulance.

 

She and her husband followed in their own vehicle. When they arrived at the hospital in Swift Current, it was to discover that the initial diagnosis was that their son had suffered a brain bleed. Medical staff decided that Hunter would need a more intensive care environment and arrangements were swiftly made to airlift him to Regina to  undergo urgent surgery for a brain bleed. Fayher and mother got back into their car to drive the 250 kilometres east down the Trans-Canada Highway to Regina General Hospital. 

 

Gronick  started playing for the Griffins two years ago. (Emily Gronick via GoFundMe

 

They set off before the arrival of the STARS air ambulance in the hope that they would arrive back in Regina around the same time as the airlift since there was a 71-minute delay before the arrival of the air ambulance. Before they left, the ambulance driver approached Sabrina to tell her "I apologize that I was not waiting for you to get on. We had to go." Approaching Regina on the highway around midnight, they became aware that the air ambulance at that moment, was flying right above them.

 

At the hospital, Paul and Sabrina Gronick sat and waited as their son underwent surgery to remove a portion of his skull.

"He had to have the right side of his skull removed because there was so much pressure from the bleed that had happened."

"And so they've left that flap of bone off and that's just in case anything starts swelling again. They have been monitoring his pressures for his brain, and so far they seem to be within normal limits."

"Right now, it's still just a wait-and-see kind of game. And unfortunately they won't know for a while. The doctor told us ...that he can foresee this being months and months and months of a type of recovery and he said that he probably anticipated that he would be on the surgical intensive care unit for probably several weeks."

Sabrina Gronick 

 Doctors were able to determine that Hunter, though able to respond to pain stimulus in his legs and his right hand, there was no response on left hand. The Gronicks have two other children, both older than Hunter. His sister Emily created a GoFundMe campaign to "help ease some of the financial burden that comes with an unexpected, life-changing injury", according to the explanation on the GoFundMe campaign page.

 

Under severe emotional duress and concern for their son's future, the family has received community support that they describe as 'heartwarming' and for which they expressed their profound gratitutude.