THE death of a Fife man who died after being restrained for four hours by police is being highlighted in a BBC documentary series.
Joseph Sneddon, 37, died at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy on April 8, 2022, two days after he was admitted suffering a mental health crisis.
His family's fight for answers will feature in this Sunday's episode of the BBC Scotland series The Firm, which follows prolific lawyer Aamer Anwar and provides an insight into the inner-workings of a high-pressured law practice.
Mr Sneddon, a father of two from Ballingry, had been restrained by police for nearly four hours and his uncle, James Scougall, has claimed that "nobody seemed to give a monkey's" about him in his final hours.
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Mr Sneddon’s family was told in the early hours of Friday, April 8, last year that his heart had stopped and medics worked on him for half an hour but could not bring him back.
Upon arrival at the hospital they saw two police officers at the nurses’ station, which was close to his bed.
Police phoned later that day to tell the family they would be visiting but, at 4.07pm on April 8, local police said it would be taken out of their hands and was with the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner (PIRC) who investigates deaths in police custody.
In November last year, Mr Sneddon's family was told his cause of death was “sudden death in a man with a significant acidosis following a prolonged period of struggling and restraint”.
After obtaining a copy of the post-mortem examination report, which is said to have had 11 redacted pages, they found that Mr Sneddon had been restrained for “at least a four-hour period” and had been very agitated and "extensively fighting" against the restraints.
Mr Sneddon's case is one of a number of Aamer's cases featuring in the BBC documentary series.
Across eight episodes, The Firm follows Aamer's cases which have also included that of Sheku Bayoh who died in police custody in Kirkcaldy.
In this Sunday's episode, which airs on BBC Scotland at 9pm, Mr Sneddon's grieving family appeal to The Firm for help seeking answers to the questions that surround the death of their relative.
In the quest for answers over how and why he died, the programme highlights how Mr Anwar and his team bring the case to the media’s attention and garner vital information from Scotland’s most senior law officer, the Lord Advocate.
The full series of The Firm is also now available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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