Police in Canada probe second taser death in one week

Police in Canada probe second taser death in one week

October 18, 2007

MONTREAL (AFP) — A man suspected of drunk driving died in hospital overnight after police used a taser to subdue him, in Canada’s second recent death plugged to the 50,000-volt stun guns, authorities said Thursday.

According to reports, Quilem Registre, 39, had been stopped Sunday for driving erratically, ramming his car into several vehicles, then became aggressive during questioning by police.

He was taken to hospital for an examination, and died later of heart and kidney failure.

Amnesty International on Thursday repeated its call for a moratorium on the use of tasers.

“We’ve been demanding a moratorium and an inquiry into the possible harm a taser can cause, and asked police to enact strict protocols for its use,” spokeswoman Anne Sainte-Marie told AFP.

A total of 17 Canadian deaths since 2003 have been linked to the device, which stuns a person with 50,000 volts of electricity.

A Polish immigrant died Sunday at the Vancouver airport following a scuffle with federal police, using a taser.

His mother Zosia Cisowski, 61, told the daily Globe and Mail her son was probably confused and anxious over his first-ever flight, and was surely frustrated at being unable to find someone to communicate with him in Polish, his only language.

“They had to give him a chance to talk. My goodness, he was so scared. He was so scared to fly because it was his first time,” she said.

Instead, “they killed him … my only boy,” she said of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers who restrained her “very good son.”

Investigators said Robert Dziekanski, 40, of Pieszyce, Poland, was detained and subdued with a taser for behaving wildly at about 1:30 am Sunday (0830 GMT) in the Vancouver Airport arrivals area. He died shortly afterward.

“The man was throwing chairs, tipped over his own luggage cart, threw a computer off a desk, seemed to be sweating profusely, and was screaming in what sounded like an eastern European language,” Sergeant Pierre Lemaitre of the RCMP said.

“He received one pulse (from a taser) and fell to the ground, but was still kicking and flailing, so we gave him a second pulse and handcuffed him, then he slipped into unconsciousness and died while EMS (Emergency Medical Services) were attending to him.”

His tearful mother told the newspaper Dziekanski was coming to Canada to start a new life. She has been in Canada for about seven years, and was eager to have him here because she is getting older, she said.