A doctor testifying at an inquest into the death of a couple and their two children in Prince Rupert, B.C., in 2023 says the father told him he had no suicidal or homicidal intent, three days before their bodies were found.
Dr. Gerald Belgardt, who was Christopher Duong’s longtime family physician as well as a doctor at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital, told the inquest that Duong was “very friendly and calm and co-operative” in a psychiatric assessment at the hospital on June 10, 2023.
Inquest counsel Steven Liu said on Wednesday that the hearing would be told that a search of “painless ways to kill yourself” was found on Duong’s device after his death.
Duong had been detained under the Mental Health Act and brought to Prince Rupert Regional Hospital after being pulled over with his family in a pickup truck at 2 a.m., telling police they had to keep driving or they would be killed in a “hit.”
The inquest in Burnaby, B.C., heard Duong was released a few hours after he was admitted, but on June 13, he was found dead with wife Janet Nguyen and their sons, aged two and four.
The inquest, which began Monday, has not yet heard how they died.
A notice of civil claim filed by B.C.’s director of civil forfeiture in 2015 describes Duong as a “violent gang member and drug trafficker” who was well known to police, while the inquest has heard that Duong was rumoured once to have been involved in the Prince Rupert drug trade.
Belgardt said he knew Duong for 25 years and on Tuesday he described his interview with Duong before his discharge from the hospital.
“I asked him if there was any suicidal intent or homicidal intent and he said absolutely — very calm and clear voice — that he was not,” Belgardt said, adding that Duong had no signs of “any mental distress whatsoever.”
On Tuesday, Matthew Jones, a former RCMP officer who had detained Duong, told the inquest that he had “no concerns” about Nguyen as a caregiver for her two boys.
He also said he felt he had no option but to intervene when he encountered Nguyen and Duong driving around Prince Rupert at 2 a.m., because the children were with them.
Jones said Duong — who he had known for about a decade and was his neighbour — told him the threat on the family’s life was based on a “feeling” and not an actual threat.
The former Mountie said that if he “had any belief, a one-per-cent belief” that there was a hit out on Mr. Duong, he would have allowed the couple to keep driving as “grown adults,” but that the presence of the children was significant.
“I’m still gonna try to investigate the best I can, even without your co-operation, but you don’t get to do that to your kids, No,” he told counsel for the Ministry of Children and Family Development, Maureen Abraham.
On Tuesday, Belgardt acknowledged receiving a text message from another doctor saying that Duong had been found by police “with lots of cash and several guns and other weapons.”
Belgardt said Duong told him that bladed weapons he had were “just implements he uses in his crab fishing,” and Belgardt “did not feel it would be relevant” that Duong also had a bear banger, a noisemaking device that resembles a pistol.
The doctor told the inquest Wednesday that there was no reason to keep Duong under the Mental Health Act, saying he believed the most accurate diagnosis of Duong’s mental state at the time was an acute stress disorder.
When asked what may have caused it, Belgardt said “apparently (Duong) got news that somebody was out to murder him and his family.”
The doctor said Duong later classified that belief as a “misunderstanding and the situation has been clarified,” and that he reported that he no longer believed that to be the case.
Belgardt said he was shocked to later learn of the deaths.
“I was devastated, shocked, surprised, sick to my stomach. I’m still sick every day when I think about it — for two and a half years now. This is going to affect me every day for the rest of my life.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 4, 2026.
Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press
