Confrontations likely set Dziekanski off at airport, inquiry hears

Two heated confrontations with an irate limousine driver at Vancouver's airport increased Robert Dziekanski's upset and agitation in the minutes before the Polish man was stunned by an RCMP Taser, a public inquiry heard Wednesday.

The arguments could offer some insight into what may have caused Dziekanski to start throwing furniture around the airport in the early morning of Oct. 14, 2007.

The inquiry has already heard from limo driver Lorne Meltzer, who admitted he shouted and swore at Dziekanski when he saw the man blocking a door he wanted to enter.

But Sima Ashrafinia, who was at the airport to pick up her husband, recalled two confrontations that were far more heated than Meltzer described.

She testified Wednesday that the limo driver started shouting almost immediately after he approached Dziekanski, who didn't speak English and had been lost in the airport for 10 hours.

Ashrafinia said the driver leaned forward to within 30 centimetres of Dziekanski and waved a security access card in his face as he continued to shout and swear.

"I said, 'Leave him alone, he doesn't speak any English.… You're provoking him, go get the security,' " Ashrafinia told the inquiry.

"His [Dziekanski's] face was kind of upset [after the confrontation], his breathing was fast. I also noticed sweat on his forehead. He was visibly upset."

Meltzer left to find a security guard but returned several minutes later and started shouting again, Ashrafinia said.

During that second confrontation, Meltzer has testified, he told Dziekanski the police would come and use a Taser on him.

Ashrafinia said she earlier saw Dziekanski walking through a public waiting area, and noticed he was talking loudly to himself.

She said she didn't think it was "super unusual," but after Dziekanski encountered Meltzer, his behaviour changed.

"Now he was shouting after the limo driver walked away," she said.

'I'd say, if anything, I may have added 10 per cent to his already freaked-out, angry, aggressive demeanour.' — Limo driver Lorne Meltzer

Ashrafinia can be seen in a video taken by a bystander during Dziekanski's last moments, trying to communicate with the man as he picked up furniture. He didn't respond, she said, although he kept repeating the Polish word for police.

By that time, Dziekanski was rifling through a desk and had started picking up furniture, at one point throwing a wooden table against a glass wall. Minutes later, four RCMP officers arrived, and within seconds stunned Dziekanski with a Taser five times. He died a short time later while lying on the airport floor.

Much of the testimony over the past week has focused on what appears in the video to be a stapler in Dziekanski's hand, and whether he raised it before or after the Taser was deployed.

Walter Kosteckyj, lawyer for Dziekanski's mother, walked Ashrafinia through the video second by second.

After the officers approach, Dziekanski turns around and throws his hands in the air while shrugging his shoulders.

At some point, he picks up a stapler and turns back towards the officers.

A desk blocks the view of his hands, but his arms appear to be pointing down below his waist during the first shock.

The hand holding the stapler only rises above his head after he is stunned, as he flails around before falling to the ground.

While Ashrafinia first said she thought Dziekanski raised the stapler before the shock, after watching the video, she agreed that it happened afterwards.

"The only time that Mr. Dziekanski raised both arms is when four officers came and did this," she said.

The limo driver's testimony also touched on that sequence of events, but he was inconsistent.

At first, Meltzer told the inquiry that Dziekanski raised a stapler in his hand before he was shocked, then he said it might have happened afterwards.

Asked by inquiry commissioner Thomas Braidwood which came first, Meltzer said he didn't know.

"I can't tell," he said. "It was such split seconds and I was in such shock.... I couldn't say for sure."

Meltzer insisted that he first tried to calm Dziekanski down before he started shouting.

While he admitted he may have added to Dziekanski's agitation, he said he doesn't think he ultimately set the man off.

"He was quite ramped up already," he said earlier in the day. "I'd say, if anything, I may have added 10 per cent to his already freaked-out, angry, aggressive demeanour."

Still, Meltzer said he regrets how he treated Dziekanski, saying he thinks about it all the time and would have helped more if he could do it over.