Zakery Rogers’s investigation is over, and although her sister is relieved, her family has answers to many questions after her death five years ago in a cell in Hamilton’s jail, she says she still want responsibility for the “domino effect” of the failures he faced.
In a recent interview with CBC Hamilton, Kylee Rogers said he told the investigation that he did not hear “an ounce of anyone’s responsibility.” He also said that it remains to be seen if the Jury’s many recommendations will be implemented to prevent similar deaths.
“I feel that we won the battle, but the war continues,” Kylee said, noting that poor mental health and addiction are still “big problems” in the community.
An agreed statement of facts for the investigation, which was made by video conference and wrapped on Friday after several days, said Zakery died while he was imprisoned at the Hamilton-Wentworth detention Center on January 31, 2021. The 26-year-old player had three children and was a brother and uncle.
Zakery, who entered and left prison, had mental health conditions and depended on opioids. He also experienced the lack of housing and suicidal thoughts.
On Christmas Eve 2020, Kylee rescued Zakery from the Maplehurst correctional complex in Milton, Ontario, where he had been in custody while waiting for the trial for charges of robbery, theft and crimes related to weapons since March of that year.
The doctors and psychiatrists had prescribed anxiety and antidepressant medications, medications to help him sleep and metadona. However, Kylee told the investigation, when she picked it up, he did not have a recipe to obtain her medications or a supply to stop him until she could get one.
Zakery’s condition got worse, Kylee said, and became erratic. He felt that he could no longer be his guarantee safely, and he fled before the police could stop him.
On January 27, 2021, the police arrested him and took him to a hospital, where he complained about coughing, abdominal pain and chills. The agreed statement of the investigation indicated that the hospital determined that a lobe in his lung had collapsed, but otherwise it was fine. Zakery was admitted at the Hamilton-Wentworth detention Center, where he told a nurse who had chest pain.
Two days later, paramedic and prison staff responded to resurrect Zakery after the guards found him in his cell without vital signs. He was reviewed by drugs and none was found in him or his cell, although an urine test indicated that he had some drugs in his system.
On January 31, Zakery was returned to jail, where the guards were prepared to verify it every 20 minutes. Although a guard recorded that he had interacted with Zakery at 5:15 pm that day, Videovigillance shows that no one looked in his cell or tried to interact with him between 4:53 pm and 5:40 pm, when a guard found him without answering again.
Approximately an hour later, Zakery was declared dead in the hospital.
“I was so relieved,” says the sister about the cause of death discovery
The investigation jury determined that Zakery died of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that can cause complications and possibly death.
Originally, a post Mortem report ruled the “not certified” cause. But a July 2025 review by Dr. Michael Pollanen, a forensic pathologist head of the Forensic Pathology Service of Ontario, found that inflammatory disease was the cause and said that methamphetamines could have contributed to Zakery’s condition.
“I was very relieved,” Kylee said. He also pointed out that during the investigation, some expert witnesses testified against Pollanen’s findings, arguing that his brother died of an overdose.
Since Zakery was imprisoned, an investigation was mandatory under the Law of Forens of Ontario. During such procedures, the lawyers for the parties, including jail, hospitals, forensics and relatives of the deceased, ask the witnesses, who may include face -to -face witnesses, experts and workers and institutional officials.
Often, families of research issues are represented by lawyers. In this case, Kylee represented his family and asked the witnesses directly.
She said she was “discouraging” listening to witnesses and lawyers to avoid assuming responsibility for the chain of events that led to Zakery’s death, but worked hard and attracted his experience working as a nurse to ask questions calmly.
“I wanted to be taken seriously. I didn’t want to look like a hysterical member of the family that is so angry that I just say things,” Kylee said in the interview. “The questions I have are significant and come from some important place.”
At one point, Kylee said, he asked the guard who wrote that he reviewed his brother the night he died, despite the fact that the video evidence showed no. Learning that was “really annoying,” he said.
He added that he felt that the guard “seemed to shrink” when he asked why he did not do his checks properly and if he thought to do it, he could have meant that his brother would have survived.
There have been investigations on multiple deaths in Hamilton prison only in the last two years, even for Ryan McKechnie, Igor Petrovic, Christopher Sharp, Robert Soral, Paul Debien, Nathaniel Golden and Jason Archer.
Investigation jurors do not make legal findings of guilt or responsibility, but can make recommendations.
In the case of Zakery, there were 13 recommendations, which focus on the actions suggested for the Ministry of the Attorney General, which supervises corrections, and the Hamilton Health Sciences hospital network (HHS). They include:
- In six months, he creates a permanent HHS committee and prison workers to review communications when someone is discharged from the hospital to jail.
- Explore the update of surveillance cameras in jail and a policy of preserving audio recordings in case of death.
- Audit of observation records every month comparing them with surveillance images to ensure that rounds are completed as recorded.
- Prepare a package to give people when they are released from jail with information about who to contact recipe medications and solve medical care problems.
- Explore to having a person or equipment that provides information on support to people released from jail and make sure they have a short -term supply of the necessary medications.
Kylee said he is satisfied with the recommendations. If they had been implemented before, he added, “they would have marked a world of difference for Zak.”
Research recommendations are not binding, but expects the simplicity of this set to make it easier to hold the government.
The “domino effect” of the failures so that Zakery was subjected to start with him not being able to get the medicine that Christmas needed, Kylee said. Instead of reintegrating, he added, his brother ended up back in the street and got back into trouble.
“These are failures for the community too.”
‘The jail is not the answer’
Kylee has observed other investigations and getting involved with a community of people aimed at penitentiary reform and avoiding deaths in jail, which leads her to believe that “jail is not the answer at all.”
He added that he was “naive” because he used to think that serving jail time helped improve people. Now, she finds, “the whole system prepares to fail” and creates new problems.
In jail, he said, people like his brother not only lose their freedom; They also place their lives in the hands of others, without even asking for help when they need it.
While some politicians are advocate for a more restrictive bail process That would keep more people behind bars, Kylee wants people who defend for different solutions that address problems such as lack of housing and addictions.
“It is really frustrating to see these research and see that the results are the same, and again and again … I think there is more hope when speaking and spreading the word, making more people see and understand what is really happening.”
