A six-member coroner's inquest panel began hearing the case Monday of a Whitehorse man who died while police were trying to arrest him last summer.

The inquest, which is taking place in the Yukon capital, is looking into the Aug. 30, 2008, death of Grant McLeod, 39, following an altercation with RCMP outside the Chilkoot Trail Inn.

The weeklong inquest began Monday morning with three men and three women selected to the jury.

The panel was then told of McLeod's activities just prior to the police officers' arrival. Jurors also visited the scene of the incident that afternoon.

Yukon RCMP, emergency medical staff and witnesses from the Chilkoot Trail Inn are expected to testify throughout the week.

Inquest mandatory

Coroner's inquests are held whenever somebody dies in police custody. The inquests do not assign blame, but rather they try to determine how to avoid similar deaths in the future.

"Even though it's mandatory, it's designed for the public to ascertain the facts relating to the death, as a means for formally focusing community attention on and initiating community response to preventable deaths," Yukon chief coroner Sharon Hanley told CBC News.

"It's a means for satisfying the community that the circumstances surrounding a death will not be overlooked, concealed or ignored."

In McLeod's case, police arrested him after receiving complaints that he was staggering at the hotel with a hypodermic needle in his hand.

A hotel tenant testified on Monday that she had heard an RCMP officer tell someone to stop resisting arrest. The tenant said she then opened the door to find officers carrying a man face-down toward the stairwell.

Criminal record

Shortly after McLeod was handcuffed, he went into medical distress. He died a short time later at Whitehorse General Hospital.

Friends described McLeod as a "gentle giant" who had been through a lot in his life.

But RCMP knew him as a drug-addicted thief who had spent most of the previous year in jail for a string of thefts around Whitehorse.

Hanley said an autopsy suggests that McLeod died from lethal amounts of cocaine.

Still, she said because he died in police custody, it'll be up to the inquest jury to determine the cause of death.