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| Kyle Tait inquest starts Monday |
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| 60th Taser-related death since Dziekanski |
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Kyle Tait (1989-2005)
After a three year wait, Kyle Tait's family will finally have an opportunity to seek answers to their questions when the coroner's inquest into his death begins Monday in Burnaby. Sixteen year old Kyle was fatally shot by New Westminster police constable Todd Sweet on August 23, 2005 following a short police pursuit. Kyle was one of four teenagers, two boys and two girls, riding as passengers in a stolen SUV driven by Ian Campbell, 18, when Cst. Sweet fired three bullets into the vehicle. Campbell was struck in the hand and Kyle died at the scene. Fortunately, the bullets missed the two 14 year old girls and the 15 year old boy riding in the back seat.
On June 19, 2005, some two months before Kyle's fatal shooting, Cst. Sweet had assaulted a car theft suspect in a "cowardly act suggesting perhaps an act of unlawful street justice", according to Judge Weitzel's reasons on sentencing. The judge noted that neither Sweet nor the other officers on the scene initially reported the assault and ordered Sweet to receive anger management counselling as part of his sentence for the criminal conviction of assault causing bodily harm.
Three months before that, in March, 2005, Sweet reportedly assaulted a 70 year old widow, who later sued for damages.
When asked why Cst. Sweet was still on active duty following the June, 2005 incident, New Westminster Chief Constable Lorne Zapotichny reportedly told The Vancouver Sun that he "did not have anough evidence to support the complaint [of excessive force]". Kyle Tait's family plans to pursue this issue, among others, at the inquest.
Read Judge Weitzel's Reasons for Sentence in R. v. Sweet here: upload
Read The Vancouver Sun, February 7, 2007 article here: upload
Chief Constable Lorne Zapotichny
Constable Todd Sweet
The coroner's inquest is now scheduled to commence Monday, August 25, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. at Coroner's Court, Metrotower II, Burnaby, BC.
Note: In British Columbia, legal aid is not available to the family of the deceased. If they wish to be represented by counsel, they must pay a lawyer or find one who will work for free. Typically, all of the other participants are paid by public funds. This case is no different. Almost everyone who enters the room at the coroner's inquest into Kyle Tait will be receiving taxpayer dollars to attend. That includes, the coroner, the coroner's lawyer, the sheriff, the coroner's staff, the lawyer for the City of New Westminster, the lawyer for Todd Sweet and the police officers who are required to attend as witnesses.
Any suggestion that the coroner's counsel can represent the interests of the deceased is, in these police-involved cases at least, open to serious question.
The requirement that the family of the deceased must use their own money to pay for legal representation is, in my opinion, an unfair extra burden on them since they have usually suffered enough by the time an inquest is finally convened. The law needs to be reformed so that the deceased's next of kin are on an equal footing with the public institutions that are usually involved in these cases.
Kenneth Oliver, 45, died yesterday in Miami after reportedly being Tasered four times by Miami police. His death will go unnoticed by most, but he is at least the 60th person to die in similar fashion since Robert Dziekanski's death at the Vancouver Airport last October. Robert Dziekanski was at least the 301st person in North America to die after being shocked by the Taser's 50,000 volt output. The list of subsequent similar fatalities, which includes five more Canadians, appears below:
302. October 14, 2007: Donald Clark Grant, 54, Asheville, North Carolina
303. October 17, 2007: Quilem Registre, 39, Montreal, Quebec
304. November 1, 2007: Seldon Deshotels, 56, Lake Charles, Louisiana
305. November 2, 2007: Stefan McMinn, 44, Hendersonville, North Carolina
306. November 7, 2007: Roger Brown, 40, Miami, Florida
307. November 16, 2007: Paul Carlock, 57, Springfield, Illinois
308. November 18, 2007: Jesse Saenz, 20, Raton, New Mexico
309. November 18, 2007: Jarrel Gray, 20, Frederick, Maryland
310. November 18, 2007: Christian Allen, 21, Springfield, Florida
311. November 20, 2007: Conrad Lowman, Jacksonville, Florida
312. November 22, 2007: Howard Hyde, 45, Halifax, Nova Scotia
313. November 24, 2007: Robert Knipstrom, 36, Chilliwack, British Columbia
314. November 29, 2007: Ashley R. Stephens, 28, Ocala, Florida
315. November 30, 2007: Cesar Silva, 32, Los Angeles, California
316. December 10, 2007: Leroy Patterson Jr., 41, Walton County, Georgia
317. January 2, 2008: Brandon Smiley, 27, Mobile, Alabama
318. January 9, 2008: Otis C. Anderson, 36, Fayetteville, North Carolina
319. January 11, 2008: Xavier Jones, 29, Coral Gables, Florida
320. January 14, 2008: Ryan Rich, 33, Las Vegas, Nevada
321. January 15, 2008: Mark Backlund, 29, New Brighton, Minnesota
322. January 17, 2008: Baron Scooter Collins, 21, Winnfield, Louisiana
323. January 18, 2008: Daniel Hanrahan, 44, Staten Island, New York
324. February 3, 2008: Louis Cryer, 32, Port Arthur, Texas
325. February 3, 2008: Joseph Davis, 50, Brandon, Mississippi
326. February 7, 2008: Richard Earl Abston, 53, Merced, California
327. February 19, 2008: Garrett Sean Farn, 41, Bakersfield, California
328. February 26, 2008: Barron Harvey Davis, 44, Mayes County, Oklahoma
329. March 4, 2008: Christopher Jackson, 37, Clay, New York
330. March 6, 2008: Javier Aguilar, 46, Roswell, New Mexico
331. March 18, 2008: Roberto Gonzalez, 24, Chicago, Illinois
332. March 20, 2008: Darryl Wayne Turner, 17, Charlotte, North Carolina
333. March 21, 2008: James Garland, 41, Deerfield Beach, Florida
334. March 29, 2008: Henry Bryant, 35, Indianapolis, Indiana
335. March 30, 2008: Walter Edward Haake Jr., 59, Topeka, Kansas
336. April 2, 2008: Jason Jesus Gomez, 35, Santa Ana, California
337. April 6, 2008: Yvelt Ocean, 31, New Kent County, Virginia
338. April 22, 2008: Uriah Samson Dach, 26, Richmond, California
339. April 24, 2008: Kevin Piskura, 24, Cincinnati, Ohio
340. April 24, 2008: Dewayne Chatt, 39, Memphis, Tennessee
341. April 27, 2008: Paul Thompson, Greensboro, North Carolina
342. April 28, 2008: Jermaine Ward, 28, Jackson, Tennessee
343. May 4, 2008: Joe Kubat, 21, St. Paul, Minnesota
344. May 6, 2008: James S. Wilson, 22, West Alton, Missouri
345. May 28, 2008: Ricardo Manuel Abrahams, 44, Woodland, California
346. May 31, 2008: Robert Ingram, 27, Raceland, Louisiana
347. June 5, 2008: Willie Maye, 43, Birmingham, Alabama
348. June 6, 2008: Donovan Graham, 35, Meridien, Connecticut
349. June 8, 2008: Tony Curtis Bradway, 26, New Yotk, New York
350. June 22, 2008: Jeffrey Marreel, 36, Norfolk, Ontario
351. June 25, 2008: Ernest Graves, 29, Rockford, Illinois
352. June 27, 2008: Nicholas Cody, 27, Dothan, Alabama
353. July 2, 2008: Isaac Bass, 34, Louisville, Kentucky
354. July 8, 2008: Samuel DeBoise, 29, St. Louis, Missouri
355. July 22, 2008: Michael Langan, 17, Winnipeg, Manitoba
356. July 27, 2008: Anthony Davidson, 29, Statesville, North Carolina
357. August 4, 2008: Jerry Jones, 45, Orange, Texas
358. August 5, 2008: Andre Thomas, 37, Swissvale, Pennsylvania
359. August 7, 2008: Lawrence Rosenthal, 54, Hemet, California
360. August 10, 1008: Kiethedric Hines, 31, Rockford, Illinois
361. August 15, 2008: Kenneth Oliver, 45, Miami, Florida
