Tasered man's cause of death not determined in autopsy

An autopsy has failed to determine what caused the death of a Polish man who was Tasered by RCMP at Vancouver International Airport on the weekend.

There was no trauma, disease or any other obvious cause of death for Robert Dziekanski, and the B.C. Coroner's Service will now wait for toxicology reports and a microscopic examination of the body, assistant deputy chief coroner Jeff Dolan said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, RCMPdenied a witness's account that the 40-year-oldmanwas jolted four times.

Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre, an RCMP spokesman, said only three officers were involved and only one of them used a Taser on Dziekanski, who wasshocked twice.

"Only one officer was in possession of the conducted-energy weapon. He was an officer who was trained and authorized to carry that," Lemaitre told CBC News Tuesday. "There were two pulses delivered to the subject to no avail, so he was Tasered twice with the same conducted-energy weapon."

Sima Ashrafinia, who was waiting for her husband's late-night flight from New York at 1:30 a.m. Sunday, told CBC News on Monday she saw five RCMP officers arriving at the scene and the man was jolted four times before falling on the floor.

"The third and fourth ones were at the same time," Ashrafinia said. "The officer at his right and the officer at his left, they Tasered him at the same time and he fell down on his right."

Lemaitre said the witness isn't used to Tasers and how they are used.

"It is absolutely normal for a person who is not familiar with a conducted-energy weapon who would see two other individuals in uniform and assume they are RCMP, [but] they weren't. They were airport security."

Lemaitre also said it's common for witnesses to have different perspectives on what happened, but he said police got the facts.

"Witness statements are never the same. People see things from a totally different mental perspective, different visual that is not uncommon. We see that a lot," he said.

Mother blames police for son's death

Dziekanski, who was immigrating to Canada to live with his family in British Columbia, was Tasered after becoming unruly in the arrivals area of the airport, tossing furniture around and ignoring pleas that he calm down, Lemaitre said.

Lemaitre said police believed the Taser was thebestmethod to subdue him. They are still investigating what happened before officers arrived at the airport and what exactly occurred in the crucial minutes before Dziekanski died, he said.

Dziekanski's mother, a cleaning lady from Kamloops, told CBC News on Tuesday she's angry and blames police for her son's death.

She said she had saved about $28,000 to bring her son, a construction worker, to Canada from Poland, and they had gone through three years of immigration procedures.

She travelled to the airport to pick up her son but somehow missed him and returned to Kamloops, she said.

Dziekanski was then stranded at the airport for 10 hours, unable to communicate until before 1:30 a.m. Sunday. He had arrived on a charter flight Saturday afternoon.

Dziekanski's mother said she has retained a lawyer.