Frank Paul's death could have been ruled homicide, inquiry told

The regional coroner who investigated the death of an aboriginal man in a Vancouver alley a decade ago admits it's possible she could have classified the death a homicide.

But Jeanine Robinson adamantly denied she ruled the death accidental because police were involved or because Frank Paul was aboriginal.

Robinson told the public inquiry into Paul's death Wednesday that she didn't think Const. David Instant intended to kill Paul, a Mi'kmaq, when he dragged him from a police vehicle and left him in an alley.

"I believe that he actually went against his sergeant's orders and put him in a place that was more sheltered," she said. "There was a bit of care shown is what I thought."

Paul, 47, a former resident of the Big Cove First Nation in New Brunswick, died on Dec. 5, 1998, of hypothermia because of exposure and alcohol intoxication.

The public inquiry, which is being conducted by B.C. Supreme Court Judge William Davies, cannot find fault, but it can recommend changes to police policies and procedures.

Under intense questioning from Steven Kelleher, a lawyer for the Paul family, Robinson admitted that 10 years later, she might come to another conclusion about the death.

"It is possible that I could have arrived at another classification or the classification of homicide," she said.

Robinson, who left the coroner's office in 2006, said she wanted a coroner's inquest into the death and said so to then-chief coroner Larry Campbell.

"I told him that it was tragic that this man was left in an alley, unattended, incapable of taking care of himself," she testified. "I didn't want it to go unnoticed."

She said Campbell, who went on to become Vancouver's mayor and then a senator, denied the request for an inquest because he said it wasn't a police in-custody death.

Campbell is scheduled to testify at the inquiry Friday.