Mounties' reaction to stapler becomes key issue at B.C. Taser inquiry
What Robert Dziekanski was doing with a stapler he had grabbed just before he was stunned multiple times by a Taser became a central issue Thursday at the B.C. public inquiry into his death.
Dziekanski was holding the stapler in the moments before four RCMP officers surrounded him and shocked him repeatedly with a stun gun at the arrivals area at Vancouver International Airport, the inquiry heard Thursday.
The stapler — seen on video flying out of Dziekanski's hand after the first shock — was cited by Crown prosecutors last year when they announced the four Mounties involved in the October 2007 confrontation wouldn't face criminal charges.
Lawyers for the officers suggested Thursday the stapler was perceived as a potential weapon by the Mounties, and police were simply following their training.
But one witness told the inquiry that before police even tried speaking with Dziekanski, one of the RCMP officers asked another about his Taser.
"I heard one officer turn to the other and say, 'Do you have your Taser out?' or 'Do you have your Taser ready?' or something like that," Alison Kula said.
Kula told the inquiry she didn't hear an answer at the time.
The question is whether Dziekanski lifted the stapler and brandished it as a weapon before he was shocked or whether his hand remained at his side until he was shocked.
"What you recall is that it was a threatening gesture to police officers?" Reg Harris, one of the officers' lawyers, asked witness Sima Ashrafinia.
"What I recall, no, Mr. Dziekanski grabbed the stapler and raised it like that, it wasn't swinging or waving," Ashrafinia said, raising her arm up, bent at the elbow. "It was a defensive gesture, that's how I translated it."
Video of final moments
A day earlier, Walter Kosteckyj, the lawyer for Dziekanski's mother, took Ashrafinia through video shot by a witness — and since broadcast around the world — of Dziekanski's last moments.
In the video, Dziekanski turns his body away from the officers, throws both hands in the air and appears to shrug as he walks away.
It's at this point, lawyers for the officers have said, that Dziekanski picked up a stapler from a desk before turning back toward the officers.
Ashrafinia agreed with Kosteckyj after watching the video that Dziekanski's hands only raise above his head after he is stunned.
However, a lawyer for one of the RCMP officers argued that throughout most of the video Dziekanski's back is facing the camera and a desk obscures his body below his waist.
Harris suggested to Ashrafinia that Dziekanski did something with the stapler, out of view of the camera, which explains why one of the officers suddenly moved out of the frame.
"And I'm going to suggest to you that the time the officer suddenly moved to the right was the time Mr. Dziekanski had the stapler in his hand. Would you agree with that?"
"Yes," she replied.
An earlier witness, a limousine driver who had a confrontation with Dziekanski just before police arrived and also saw him being stunned, said he didn't know whether Dziekanski lifted the stapler before or after getting jolted.
Inquiry commissioner Thomas Braidwood ordered still pictures from the video to see whether they could shed any light on what Dziekanski did with the stapler.
All four officers are scheduled to appear at the inquiry in the coming weeks, and their lawyers have suggested they will testify they felt threatened by something Dziekanski did with the stapler.
Dziekanski, who was immigrating to Canada from Poland and spoke little English, died on Oct. 14, 2007, shortly after being stunned up to five times by RCMP Tasers. He had been wandering the airport for hours and became agitated after a series of communications breakdowns kept him in a controlled area.