Sarah Annie Brown is scared to answer her phone.
Her husband, Davin Cochrane, father of their newborn baby girl, is lying in a dark room at Victoria General Hospital in an induced coma. A big chunk of his brain was removed, she said, after he was shot twice in the head by an RCMP officer on the evening of March 28.
For some inexplicable reason, Cochrane was driving a track loader skid-steer along residential streets in Duncan and refused to stop for police. A neighbourhood listened in disbelief as gunshots rang out from Evans Park, followed by the sirens of an ambulance racing Cochrane to hospital.
“I’m a wreck. I can’t handle any bad news right now,” a fragile Brown said Friday morning after a hectic drive from Ladysmith with 11-year-old Preston, six-year-old Willow, and three-month-old Mylah. “His brain pressure is up and down. The CT scan was good. It showed lots of blood flow, but they’re not going to wake him anytime soon.”
It’s Cochrane’s 32nd birthday. Willow and Mylah are wearing new dresses for their visit.
The older kids are carrying posters decorated with hearts and photographs from happier times.
“We love and miss you dearly,” says one poster. “You have to keep fighting for us. We need you. I can’t wait to make more beautiful memories together.”
Cochrane is so deeply sedated he can’t hear. Brown likes to think he knows she is there, sitting by his bedside, praying nonstop.
His father, Michael Cochrane, who drove through the night from Grande Prairie, Alta. when he heard his son had been shot, has been sitting by his bedside all morning.
“I’m researching my legal options, but I want to focus on the love and care and support for Davin,” he said.
“He’s stable. He’s doing remarkably well and they’re doing everything they can to get him as rested as they can. This will be a long journey and he is doing his best.”
The Ladysmith couple met through a friend a few years ago.
“I fell in love with his beautiful blue eyes. He was so helpful just right away. He asked if I needed help with anything, help with the garden, help fixing the truck. We started off as friends. He was helpful and kind, then so good and natural at being a father. He was loving and caring. He was a big kid himself,” said Brown.
Cochrane has taken on her children as his own. He got Willow over her fear of riding down hills on a scooter. He taught her how to be a tomboy.
“Daddy got her over all her fears and the fear of the dark, right?” Brown said to the little girl.
He put Preston on the handlebars of a bike and rode him to school. He taught Preston how to draw and helped him build a portfolio.
“It’s pretty hard right now. He did a ton. We call him Mr. Fix-it or Super Dad. Our house feels upside down,” she said.
Cochrane was by her side when she went into labour with Mylah, offering comfort and calm when everything went wrong and she needed an emergency C-section.
“All the doctors and nurses said to him ‘Good for you. You should have had 10 kids.’ He’s a real natural.”
He named Mylah because it sounds like ‘My love,’ his endearment for Brown.
Cochrane has a criminal record and a history of mental illness and past substance abuse but had been doing well for the past three years.
He had been working as a carpenter for B.C. Ferries in Nanaimo, then moved to work as a carpenter at the Crofton mill, said Brown.
“He was doing great. He’d made poor choices but that was in the past. We had a normal life.”
Brown didn’t know that he’d been in a serious car crash in Chemainus on the morning of March 28 until after the shooting.
“He hit a pole. His head went through the windshield. He had a severe concussion and was acting out of sorts,” said Brown, who took a photograph of the car.
She was told he’d been taken to hospital and given a narcotic for pain, then simply walked away without waiting for knee surgery. She wasn’t contacted by anyone at the hospital. Now she wonders if, in his altered state, he was on the heavy equipment trying to make his way home to her.
“Davin would never hurt anyone by the way. He wasn’t in the right state of mind. That was not my Davin.”
The Independent Investigations Office of B.C. is investigating the shooting. The watchdog investigates all police-involved shootings and incidents of serious harm.
Brown has a lot of questions. She wants the police to be held accountable for what happened that night. She plans to hire a lawyer to look at her options.
“I want the cop to know they hurt some kids pretty bad. They idolized him. Davin changed our world. It doesn’t even make sense to me. None of this makes any sense,” said Brown, looking down at the tiny baby in her arms.
