It was a routine call that would change his life. Victoria police Const. Ian Jordan was responding to reports of a break-in on Sept. 22, 1987 when his police cruiser slammed into another responding unit.
Jordan has spent the last 30 years locked in a coma, his family and fellow police officers visiting him periodically at the Glengarry extended care hospital. On Wednesday night, he died.
Jordan had just left the old VicPD headquarters on Fisgard Street when his police cruiser collided with another one at Douglas and Fisgard streets. Retired Sgt. Ole Jorgensen, the other responding officer and a close friend of Ian’s, suffered a serious leg injury in the crash.
Jordan was supposed to be heading home that night to his wife, Hilary, and 16-month-old son Mark, as he had suffered a minor injury earlier in the shift. But when the call came in, he responded. He was 35 years old at the time.
Jordan suffered a permanent brain injury which left him quadriplegic and in a vegetative state.
In an interview with the Times Colonist in 2003, Hilary Jordan said she knew the officer who knocked on her door early that morning was bringing bad news.
“Is he dead?” she remembers asking. She was told her husband was breathing
She went to the hospital where her husband was in the intensive care unit. Jordan was kept alive with tubes for eating and breathing and eventually was transferred to Glengarry hospital.
Jordan would never see his son grow up, never say goodbye to his mother, Marion, before she died in 2009.
Victoria police said Jordan’s enduring legacy was the establishment of a “trauma team” which eventually turned into the critical incident stress management team, which offers emotional support to officers after a traumatic incident.
The department said a funeral with full police honours is being planned.
