Photo: Luke McPake / The Wireless.
Prison staff's failure to answer an emergency call from a cell intercom and a subsequent delay in starting CPR potentially contributed to the death of a Christchurch inmate, a coroner has ruled.
The 67-year-old man, whose name was suppressed by a court, died of heart disease at Christchurch Men's Prison in Templeton in 2022.
When his cellmate woke to find him gasping for air he tried to raise the alarm but the emergency intercom call went unanswered.
In findings released on Thursday, Coroner Dan Moore said there had not been an adequate explanation as to why no-one responded to the call.
"In my assessment, the intercom going unanswered at the time of (the man's) death is a significant failure on the part of Corrections," he s
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