First witness at inquiry seeks answers regarding death of native

The family of Frank Paul, the New Brunswick native who died after police left him in a Vancouveralley in 1998, wondered how such a thing could happen.

Peggy Clement, the 47-year-old's cousin, was the first witness to give evidence Tuesday in Vancouver during the opening of the public inquiry looking into the death of Paul in the Downtown Eastside.

Clement recalled how the family learned of Paul's death and watched a video showing him at the police station the night he died, intoxicated and crawling on his hands and knees.

"For about half an hour we couldn't stop crying and my mother kept saying: 'How come they do that to him? How could they do that to him?' Because she could see him crawling around," she said.

"The name Frank Paul has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with the institution and system that have been imposed by others on the indigenous population," said lawyer Cameron Ward during his opening statement.

Frank Paul, a former resident of the Big Cove First Nation in New Brunswick, died of hypothermia because of exposure due to alcohol intoxication on Dec. 5, 1998, after police picked him up drunk and later left him in a back alley.

When Paul's body was sent home to New Brunswick, it came with a black garbage bag full of his clothes — still wet, Clement said.

Clement said she and her family hope to find out what really happened that December night.

"There are a lot of questions we'd like answered. We'd really like to know why they [police officers] had to take him outside the police station," she said.

"I know hehad a hard life, but I don't think he deserved to die the way he died."

David Dennis, vice-president of the United Native Nations, a group that helped Paul through much of the early 1990s when he was homeless on the west side, said there is no level of deterrence for police to change their attitudes towards aboriginal people.

"There is a marked indifference on the part of police towards aboriginal people in this province and it has not changed since the colonial days," Dennis said outside the inquiry.

The inquiry will hear from 70 witnesses and will look at the response of the Vancouver Police Department, the British Columbia Ambulance Service, the coroner's service and the criminal justice branch.

The inquirycontinues on Wednesday.