But could Micha's death have been avoided?
We've already noted her family saying that before she took her own life, private Miguel had been placed on suicide watch by Price Barracks Wellness Center personnel. But, reports say, she was allowed to leave that condition to play a football match against police.
We put that question to Lieutenant Colonel Burns this morning:
Cherisse Halsall:
"We received information that Micha was on suicide watch and that she was taken off suicide watch in order to play the BDF versus Police game that took place on the 12th August. Do you have any awareness of that?"
Lieutenant Colonel Burns, Acting Chief Of Staff
"Okay, in respect to a suicide watch again I put the questions in similar words to the counselling department and to the chief counsellor who I just met with on Tuesday and she told me directly that sir, I can't give you that information. So, unfortunately, I cannot disclose that information here, because I'll be lying. I'd want to say ask the counsellor, but` I'm sure she would give you the similar answer that not until the end of the investigation would we want to disclose that nature of information. We are looking at the confidentiality of these cases, because as senior command of the BDF you'd expect that you would know every single detail about our soldiers. We, in respect to mental health and wellness, it is a new department within the BDF. We only just started 3-4 year ago to understand the concepts dealing with mental health and grappling with health from our international partners that have way more experience that we do and so while it would be behooves to know every single thing there is about the different cases in the BDF, we are always cited for confidentiality by the counsellors and the particular chief counsellor for us she is a civilian and if she tells our chief doctor that our medicals that they cant show us the file for some reason, then we have to respect that. We are looking at it now to see, listen you have to divulge this information to the senior leadership, because we need to know, so we might be changing a few of these clauses and it might go against some of the confidentiality regulations within the medical department, but because we are an organization that needs to know about our soldiers, we'll have to just probably cite those rules as maybe only for the civilian side."
