Few answers from Airport Customs union in Taser death

Can't explain why no one offered help to connect Dziekanski, mother

Last Updated: Saturday, November 17, 2007 | 12:14 PM PT

CBC News

The head of the union representing customs officers at the Vancouver airport says it was unusual no one offered to help Robert Dziekanski connect with his mother the night he died, after being stunned with a Taser by the RCMP.

Before police arrived, Robert Dziekanski picked up a small table and put it in the doorway between the customs exit area and a public lounge.
(Paul Pritchard)

George Scott, vice-president with the Customs Excise Union, told CBC News he can't explain why nobody was willing to check where Dziekanski was on the night of October 14, despite repeated requests from his mother.

"It's something that wouldn't be hard to find out," Scott told CBC News on Thursday said. "We certainly do have the resources."

The comments from the union leader are the first public statement about Canada Border Services Agency conduct during the incident.

The agency has remained silent about how Dzeikanski went unnoticed for more than eight hours in the highly controlled customs and passport area inside the immigration hall at the airport.

Meanwhile on the other side of the wall, Dziekanski's mother Sofia Cisowski spent more than six hours in the international arrivals lounge that night trying desperately — even crying to officials — to persuade anyone at the airport to help her make contact with her son.

"I was asking the woman and she said do not worry because security people or somebody else... they'll find him," Cisowski told CBC news.

But nobody did. Larry Berg, the Vancouver Airport C.E.O was also unable to explain why airport staff would not help Cisowski contact her son in the immigration hall.

Airport staff refused to help mother find son

"I can't speak for everybody who works at the airport that was in involved that evening. It wouldn't be appropriate for me," Berg told CBC News last week. "We're going to…wait for the coroner's report before we make any conclusions or decisions relative to that."

Berg said staff did eventually page Dziekanski, but used a public address system that did not broadcast in the secure customs area controlled by the CBSA.

Cisowski said she was sure here son was inside the secure customs area waiting for her by the baggage carousel because she had told him specifically to wait for her there.

But she later found out the public could not access that area, and she turned to airport officials for help to make contact with her son, who spoke only Polish and had never been on a plane before.

After her repeated requests for help were turned down at the first airport help desk, Cisowski told CBC News she went to the CBSA office in the waiting area near the international arrivals lounge.

But when officials there checked a computer, they told her there was no sign of her son, even though records would later show he had passed through the primary passport check into the area.

Mother advised to go home

She then found a second airport help kiosk and made several more requests for help making contact with her son, but eventually she was told he was not there, and she should go home.

At around 10:30 p.m., she drove back to Kamloops.

Around the same time, Dziekanski finally made his way to the secondary customs check inside the secure customs area, where he was redirected to immigration control, and eventually emerged from the customs area around midnight.

An hour later an agitated and confused Dziekanski was confronted by the police. Within 30 seconds they stunned him at least twice with a Taser. He died a minute and half later.

Currently there are four investigations into the death underway, by the B.C. coroner's service, the RCMP, the public complaints commissioner of the RCMP and the Vancouver international Airport.

The Canada Border Services Agency has not said if it is conducting an investigation of its own.