Video shows Polish traveler dying after Canadian police use Taser Agence France-Presse

Published: Thursday November 15, 2007



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Print This Email This A video showing the dramatic last moments of a Polish immigrant who died after police shocked him with a Taser and restrained him at Vancouver's airport last month. Robert Dziekanski, 40, of Pieszyce, Poland, was tasered and restrained by police on October 14 after going on a rampage out of frustration for waiting 10 hours for his mother. He spoke no English and died minutes later while being attended by an emergency medical team. The incident is under investigation by local police, by Canada's national police complaints commission and by an independent coroner's service. The Polish embassy has filed a formal diplomatic note asking Canada for full disclosure of the incident. Walter Kosteckyj, the victim's family lawyer, said he was disturbed by the video because Dziekanski was not violent. "I was expecting to see a confrontation" with police, he told AFP. The video of Dziekanski's death was released to the media by Paul Pritchard, a Canadian traveler who was at the airport at the time of the incident. Police had originally taken the recording from Pritchard promising to give it back, but then refused to return it until after Pritchard filed a lawsuit in court. In the video Dziekanski appears frightened, sweating and exhausted, and speaks to himself in Polish. Looking agitated, he paces back and forth through an automatic door, which he jams open with chairs and a table. At one point, he takes a computer off a counter and throws it to the ground, as airport security guards stand close by. "He's speaking Russian ... we need a Russian interpreter," one guard is heard saying in the video. Four policemen then walk into view. One says, "How are you sir," as they all surround Dziekanski, who appears to turn his back on them, trying to move away. At that point, a policeman hits Dziekanski with a Taser, making him scream. The immigrant falls, then writhes on the ground with his knees pulled to his chest as all four police officers pin him down. Seconds later, Dziekanski is seen lying still. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association said in a statement that it has filed two formal complaints against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, "for misrepresenting the facts of Robert Dziekanski's death and unreasonably seizing and actively suppressing a video recording of the incident." On October 13, Dziekanski, a construction worker who wanted to emigrate to British Columbia where his mother lives, boarded a plane for the first time in his life in Frankfurt, Germany, the family lawyer said. Because of a mix-up, he waited for 10 hours for his mother in a secure area of the airport, while she waited on the other side of a wall in the public area, Kosteckyj said. No airport, customs or security employees at the airport apparently tried to help either of them, he added. Eventually Dziekanski emerged into the public area, but his mother had left and Dziekanski apparently panicked, the lawyer added. The following video is taken from an October broadcast of CTV, which was uploaded to YouTube by a user last month:



