Man dies in hospital after being tasered by police

Edmonton – A man died in hospital Sunday morning after being tasered by Police.

According to Leduc RCMP, officers responded to several calls Friday evening about a 27-year-old man who was a suspect in a series of assaults, theft of automobiles, driving complaints and hit and runs. The RCMP says officers found the man outside of a gas station in Leduc, where a fight took place between the suspect and police. The suspect was tasered during the altercation, then handcuffed. Police say officers then noticed the man had gone into medical distress, so EMS was called.

The man was taken to Leduc Hospital and later to Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton before he passed away on Sunday.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) is investigating the incident.

“The RCMP are investigating the actions of the man, his arrest, why he was being sought by police. Our mandate from ASIRT is to conduct the actions into the officers actions,” says ASIRT Spokesperson Sarah Jackson. “So what we’ll look at is what happened in the course of the arrest, why he was taken to hospital, did that have anything to do with the arrest itself.”

ASIRT investigators are looking into whether the man being tasered resulted in his medical distress.

“There’s no correlation between the use of the taser and why the man was taken to hospital, that will come out in the investigation, but right now there’s absolutely no proof that that’s why he was in hospital,” says Jackson. “All aspects are going to be looked at by doctors at the hospital and then reviewed by our investigators.

An autopsy will be conducted on the victim later in the week.  ASIRT investigators hope the autopsy will confirm a cause of death.

“Once the cause of death is determined it will allow us to focus the investigation on the manner of death,” says ASIRT Executive Director Cliff Purvis.

ASIRT isn’t releasing how many times the man was tasered or what was his medical distress.

Purvis says investigators are looking at footage from an RCMP cruiser camera, as well as cell phone and security video.

Investigators are asking anyone who witnessed the incident or captured it on video to contact ASIRT.

ASIRT is an independent body established by Alberta’s Solicitor General and Minister of Public Security with a mandate to investigate incidents or complaints involving serious injury or death of a person resulting from the actions of a police officer.