Jury shown jail video of guard closing door on night of inmate's fatal beating

While something was happening in a cell where an inmate was killed, a correctional officer closed the door to his control room down the hall, video surveillance at a trial in London showed Wednesday.

Leslie Lonsbary, since fired from Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC), was in the officer's control room the night of Oct. 31, 2013, when Anthony George beat cellmate Adam Kargus to death.

Lonsbary and former EMDC operations manager Stephen Jurkus are on trial in London for failing to provide the necessaries of life to Kargus.

For most of the morning of Day 3 of the trial, the seven-man, five-woman jury watched a split-screen video taken from two cameras inside EMDC, one showing Unit 6 Left, where Kargus was killed in cell 3, and one showing the correctional officers' control room down the hall.

At EMDC, the control rooms do not offer a view inside the ranges and officers must walk down a hallway to a door into what's called the cage - a barred area that juts into the unit. The cage has a barred door to the unit.

Surveillance video from Unit 6 Left shows activity at the cell windows of cell 3, where Kargus was killed, and several other cells the evening of Oct. 31.

London police investigator Cam Halliday took the jury through the video, careful to describe the actions inside the cells as "activity." There is no audio on the tapes.

For much of the hour-long video, from about 8 to 9 p.m. Oct. 31, there is a lot of activity in the unit but little around the control room. About 8:13 p.m., a correctional officer stopped into the control room for about 30 seconds, then walked down the hall toward the unit opening, but veered left into a stairwell.

A few seconds later, Lonsbary appeared in the doorway to look down the hall toward the unit, then went back inside.

About 8:18 p.m., he shut the door to the control room.

Lonsbary left the control room at 8:50 p.m., walking away from the unit, and returned about 9 p.m., the video shows.

The entire time Kargus was assaulted, the door from the hallway to the cage was open, Halliday testified. The distance from the control room door to cell 3 was measured at 45 feet, he said.

The jury was also shown images and video of a correctional officer stopping by cell 3 in Unit 3, directly below the cell where George killed Kargus.

In his opening to the jury, Crown attorney Fraser Kelly said evidence will show that the assault on Kargus could be heard in the floor below.
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