Polish neighbour testifies Dziekanski nervous about flying

Robert Dziekanski was nervous about flying and hadn't slept for two days before setting off on his long journey to Canada, one of his neighbours in Poland told a public inquiry Monday.

Iwona Kosowska angrily admonished lawyers for the federal government and RCMP, saying their questions appeared to be an effort to demonize Dziekanski and make the circumstances of his death less appalling.

"You're trying to make a bad person out of him, which means you can kill a bad person but you cannot kill a good person," Iwona Kosowska told Ravi Hira, the lawyer for the officer who fired the Taser.

"How can you?"

Dziekanski had been travelling for more than a day and was in Vancouver's airport for nearly 10 hours by the time he was stunned multiple times by an RCMP Taser and died in October 2007.

He was coming to live with his mother in Kamloops, B.C., leaving behind his life in Gliwice, Poland, where he lived in the same apartment building as Iwona Kosowska.

"From what I can remember, he couldn't sleep for at least 48 hours prior to boarding the plane," said Kosowska, who appeared at the inquiry by video conference and testified in Polish through a translator.

"He was nervous."

Dziekanski tired and confused

Several witnesses have told the inquiry Dziekanski appeared tired and confused before his confrontation with police, who were called after he started throwing furniture in the airport's international terminal.

Fellow passengers on his flights from Poland described him as docile and said he slept much of the time. It's believed Dziekanski may have been asleep again in the roughly five hours he spent unnoticed in a secure customs hall, where he mistakenly believed his mother would be waiting.

It was Dziekanski's first time flying and the only time the 40-year-old had ever left his home country.

Kosowska said Dziekanski was afraid of the flight and of being in airports in Germany and Vancouver because he only spoke Polish.

He started smoking more as his trip approached, she said, and delayed his flight by two weeks, although she didn't know why.

But she said he was excited to be with his mother and start a new life.

"Yes, he was afraid, but he knew that when he arrives in Canada his mom would be waiting at the airport," she said. "He couldn't wait, he really wanted to go to Canada."

She said she knew Dziekanski and his mother, Zofia Cisowski, for about 20 years and would see him often. She described him as a man who didn't anger easily.

"He was very helpful, generally he was a very, very good man," said Kosowska. "He was a very open man, he had a group of friends that he was meeting regularly."

Lawyers for the federal government and the RCMP officers involved in Dziekanski's death asked her about Dziekanski's fear of flying, how much he drank and smoked, and whether he was an aggressive person.

Witness insisted Dziekanski not alcoholic

They also asked her about a woman Dziekanski was apparently living with, who Kosowska said she believed was an alcoholic.

But Kosowska insisted Dziekanski was not aggressive and wasn't a heavy drinker, and she angrily admonished the lawyers.

"Can we stop this line of questioning?" she demanded.

Crown prosecutors, in announcing last December that the four Mounties involved wouldn't be charged, said an autopsy found signs of chronic alcohol abuse, although no alcohol was found in Dziekanski's system.

Prosecutors raised the possibility that alcohol withdrawal could explain Dziekanski's erratic behaviour at the airport.

Hira has applied to inquiry commissioner Thomas Braidwood to ask Polish officials for any police reports related to Dziekanski.

Hira, who was later heckled by members of the public as he left court, told the inquiry that Dziekanski may have spent time in custody.

The lawyer for Dziekanski's mother, Walter Kosteckyj, said it's not true.

He pointed out that Dziekanski would have gone through a criminal record check before coming to Canada.

"What my friend is referring to is that Mr. Dziekanski had an incident when he was a juvenile," Kosteckyj told the inquiry.

"He's trying to turn an event that occurred when Mr. Dziekanski is 17 years of age and make it relevant to now."

Outside the inquiry, Kosteckyj said Dziekanski was in a reformatory school following the incident, not jail, as Hira suggested.