Witness backtracks on key details at Taser inquiry

A senior civilian employee with the RCMP is no longer sure it was a police officer that he saw checking Robert Dziekanski's vital signs before he died at Vancouver's airport, an inquiry heard Tuesday.

Robert Jorssen, the Mounties' chief financial officer for the Pacific region, was at Vancouver International Airport at the time the Polish immigrant was tackled by four RCMP officers in the arrivals area on Oct. 14, 2007.

Jorssen testified Monday he saw a police officer twice check Dziekanski's pulse on the wrist and neck. In a statement to police two months after Dziekanski's death, Jorssen had said he assumed it was a Mountie checking the pulse.

But Jorssen supplied a different account Tuesday when he was cross-examined by Walter Kosteckyj, the lawyer for Dziekanski's mother, Zofia Cisowski.

'What I saw is one of the officers use his knee right on top of the centre back of the man … that is very dangerous.' — Nick Le, Taser inquiry witness

"I'm going to suggest to you, sir, you never saw any police officers checking this man's pulse," Kosteckyj said.

"What I know, I saw somebody touch this man's wrist and towards his neck to feel a pulse, whether it was the hand of an officer or somebody else, that possibly could be the case, I can't tell," Jorssen replied.

Dziekanski was immigrating to Canada from Poland and spoke little English. He died shortly after being stunned up to five times by the RCMP Taser. He had been wandering the airport for hours and became agitated after a series of communications breakdowns kept him in a controlled area.

Whether the four officers tried to help the man after he collapsed has become a key issue at the inquiry. Multiple witnesses had testified that at no time did they see police do anything to monitor Dziekanski's vital signs.

A fire captain testified earlier that when his crew arrived, no one was standing near Dziekanski and he didn't believe anyone had been properly monitoring him. Other witnesses at the inquiry have testified they didn't see the officers monitoring or performing first aid.

In his police statement and in his testimony, Jorssen said Dziekanski was raising his arm with a stapler in his hand before the police fired the first of five shots from the Taser.

After he watched in slow motion a video of the incident, recorded by a bystander, Jorssen conceded that Dziekanski might not have raised a stapler that he had in his hand above his head prior to being hit with the Taser.

Another witness, Nick Le, testified Tuesday that after Dziekanski was shocked with the Taser, a police officer pinned him to the floor with a knee to his back.

Le, a limo driver who was at the airport to pick up a passenger, said he saw three officers hovering over Dziekanski and two of them were holding Dziekanski's hands.

"What I saw is one of the officers use his knee right on top of the centre back of the man," said Le. "And that is very dangerous."

A lawyer for one of the officers, David Butcher, immediately objected to Le's characterization, saying he should stick to his observations, not his opinion.

But Le said he has studied martial arts since he was four years old, and he felt the officer's actions were dangerous.

Le said he watched paramedics and firefighters pounding on Dziekanski's chest as he lay on the floor. By that time, firefighters have told the inquiry, Dziekanski was likely already dead.

All four officers are expected to testify at the inquiry in the coming weeks. The inquiry is scheduled to run until the end of February, after which retired B.C. Appeal Court justice Thomas Braidwood will issue a report with his recommendations and any findings of misconduct.