Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver, BC (CanWest News Service) – Maria Cisowski could not contain her grief or her anger when she spoke to the media Thursday about the death of her 40-year-old son at the Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 14.
With her lawyer Walter Kosteckyj at her side, the distraught 61-year-old woman said she doesn’t understand why no one at the airport was available to help her son, Robert Dziekanski, who died minutes after being Tasered by police, nearly 10 hours after he arrived as a hopeful immigrant from Poland.
“This is the most difficult time of my life,” she sobbed quietly.
“I had been waiting for seven years for him. I had been saving for seven years.”
She fell silent for a moment, her eyes falling on his picture in front of her at the news conference in Vancouver’s Polish Hall.
“Now I lost my son. I loved him so much,” she said.
Her lawyer pointedly blamed the RCMP, immigration authorities, and the airport’s communication systems, which he said are inadequate and kept mother and son from uniting for five hours. Staff don’t have the capacity to communicate between different areas of the airport, nor to page the public in a secure area, he said.
“The initial report provided by the RCMP spokesman was erroneous when he suggested he had recently arrived and just come in,” said Mr. Kosteckyj. “In fact, he had been in Canada, in our country, for nearly 10 hours.”
The death remains under police investigation.
Mr. Dziekanski had caught a plane from Poland to Frankfurt and then boarded a connecting flight to Vancouver, said Mr. Kosteckyj. He cleared customs and waited in the secure area for his mother. She arrived from Kamloops, but was never able to locate him.
Although she went to several people for aid, no one could help her. Mr. Kosteckyj said broadcasts over the airport PA system are not heard in the secure area where Mr. Dziekanski was waiting, so he never heard his mother’s pleas.
“In that beautiful edifice that we are all so proud of, he got completely lost,” said Mr. Kosteckyj. “He was lost to our authorities and received little or no help.
“(The mother and son) were within 150 to 200 feet of each other for not less than five hours. During that course of time, his mother sought help from Canadian Immigration. But there was apparently no way for her to effectively get a message to him.”
Mr. Dziekanski apparently spent the hours sitting on a bench, until he became frustrated and acted out at about 1:30 a.m. local time.
Responding RCMP officers say they shocked Mr. Dziekanski twice with a Taser after the Polish-speaking man refused English commands to calm down. He died four minutes later.
The RCMP are awaiting a toxicology report to determine whether there were drugs in Mr. Dziekanski’s system.
A preliminary autopsy showed there were no signs of trauma, disease or any other obvious cause of death.
Mr. Dziekanski was sponsored by his mother to come to Canada, Mr. Kosteckyj said, and passed the necessary health checks before being issued the required documentation to come.
“He came as a landed immigrant, so he went through full medical screens and checks, so he didn’t just walk in the door.”
When asked if Ottawa had extended official condolences, Maciej Krych, consul-general of Poland in Vancouver, responded coldly, “So far, no.”
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