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OTTAWA — A 37-year-old man who lay motionless on the pavement in front of an apartment building after an altercation with police Sunday morning was dead 45 minutes before he arrived at The Ottawa Hospital trauma centre, a family spokesman says.

Abdirahman Abdi was said to have been in critical condition following a confrontation with several Ottawa police officers after a brief foot chase led to him being handcuffed, bloodied and face down on the pavement.

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Police had been called over allegations of a disturbance at a nearby coffee shop. The subsequent foot chase ended at Abdi’s apartment building at 55 Hilda St. in Hintonburg, where witnesses say police took him down and used pepper spray and batons in a violent arrest that horrified the neighbourhood.

Dozens of people watched from the apartments above as Abdi lay in a pool of blood.

The civilian police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, is now investigating his arrest.

That arrest and Abdi’s subsequent death have fuelled community outrage and reignited long-standing questions about how police deal with mentally ill persons and whether, as some in the community have suggested, his treatment by police was racially motivated.