National Post (National Edition)
RCMP spokesman struggled with stress
BURNABY, B.C. • A sergeant who became the public face of the RCMP after Robert Dziekanski was fatally stunned with a Taser at Vancouver’s airport may have seen television news coverage connected to the case the morning of his death by suicide, his widow says.
A coroner’s inquest began Monday into the death on July 29, 2013, of Pierre Lemaitre, who was 55.
Sheila Lemaitre said that morning their TV was showing news coverage announcing that the verdict in the perjury trial of one of the officers involved in the Dziekanski case was coming out that day. She muted it and switched channels, but he may have seen it, she recalled.
“Pierre had been having a difficult time listening to any news, radio or watching it on TV because of his name coming up and the situation,” she told the inquest.
Lemaitre said she found her husband’s body in the basement later that day.
Lemaitre handled media relations in the days following Dziekanski’s death in October 2007 and was later accused of misleading the public about what happened during the Polish immigrant’s fatal confrontation with police.
Lemaitre said Dziekanski was only stunned twice, but it emerged later the Taser was deployed five times. He also said during an interview with the CBC that there was no video camera in that area of the airport. But it turned out there was a video shot by a witness and Lemaitre had watched portions of it before issuing the first news release about the death.
By the time the video came out, Lemaitre was no longer handling media inquiries about the incident.
Lemaitre testified at an inquiry into Dziekanski’s death that he was simply relaying to the public what a homicide unit spokesman had told him about the altercation. The inquiry concluded Lemaitre was not aware that some of the information he released was incorrect.
Sheila Lemaitre told the coroner’s inquest Monday that her husband had struggled with anxiety and depression for years. The first time he was prescribed medication for these conditions was in 1993, she said.
About four weeks before his death he had switched medications, and when she expressed concerns about side effects, she recalled him replying, “I have to try something. I can’t live like this.”
Coroner’s inquests review the circumstances of a death and explore whether deaths in similar circumstances can be prevented.