VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Police whose efforts to subdue an unruly traveler with stun-gun shocks left the man dead acted properly at the time, one of the officers involved testified Tuesday.
The death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski — who was shocked by police five times at the Vancouver airport in 2007 — was widely seen around the world after a bystander filmed it.
“Given the fact that we came in without all that prior knowledge and had to deal with the situation with the limited information we had, I can’t say I could have done anything differently,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Gerry Rundel said in his second day of testimony at an inquiry into the incident.
Rundel said he regretted the outcome, but when the officers used a stun gun on Dziekanski — who spoke only Polish and apparently had become upset after waiting 10 hours for his mother — they acted according to their training.
