Cocaine, not Taser, killed man in custody: report
Calgary police are not responsible for the death of a man in custody because cocaine use, not a jolt from a Taser, ultimately killed him, Alberta investigators have concluded.
Gordon Walker Bowe, a 30-year-old resident of Castlegar, B.C., and father of two, died a day after he was arrested in Calgary last Nov. 1.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), which investigates any use of force by police that results in serious injury or death, announced Thursday that while a Taser was fired during the arrest, Bowe had "life-threatening levels of cocaine in his body."
"The Taser did not play a role in relation to the death of Gordon Bowe. Rather, the tragedy of his death was as a result of excited delirium due to the ingestion of cocaine," ASIRT executive director Clifton Purvis said, citing the medical examiner’s report.
An officer fired a Taser twice, but it didn’t successfully deploy because only one of the two barbs required to complete the electric circuit embedded in Bowe’s body. The same officer later used the Taser directly on Bowe's body in stun mode, Purvis said.
"There was no marks on the body to confirm it came into contact. We believe it may have, although it was not successful in making Mr. Bowe compliant in the arrest. Energy may have flowed into his body in the stun mode, but it had no effect on him."
Family questions results
Bowe’s family isn’t satisfied with the results of the investigation and is considering filing complaints against the four officers who arrested him.
"This [ASIRT] body, in all appearances to us, is set up to be another roadblock to get at the truth," said John Chernenkoff, Bowe’s father-in-law.
Cuts and bruises on Bowe's body that have the family concerned could have been caused by the arrest, or by his erratic behaviour prior to the arrest, but they aren't what killed him, Purvis said.
Purvis released more details about Bowe’s arrest.
Four officers arrived at a vacant duplex in the 500 block of 42nd Street S.E. at about 8 p.m. following reports of a man acting erratically.
Police could see Bowe through a broken window in a dark basement, running, jumping, waiving his arms and screaming incomprehensibly, according to Purvis.
They told him they were police officers, but he didn’t listen to their commands and was hurting himself and damaging property, which gave police reasonable grounds to arrest him, Purvis asserted.
Bowe ignored their commands and a warning that they were going to use a Taser on him, Purvis said. The officer deployed the Taser through the window, but it didn’t seem to work, and after a "significant struggle" involving three more police officers, Bowe was arrested.
After he was handcuffed, Bowe "was observed to be in medical distress" and had difficulty breathing, Purvis said. Paramedics treated him and took him to hospital, where he died the next day.