The coroner's service has postponed an inquest into the suicide of the RCMP officer who was in charge of media relations when Robert Dziekanski was fatally stunned with a Taser at the Vancouver airport.
Pierre Lemaitre, who was stationed in Prince George in the 1990s, was 55 years old and a sergeant with the Mounties when he died at his home in Abbotsford in July 2013.
A coroner's inquest was scheduled to begin Nov. 19. It has been postponed to Nov. 26 due to scheduling conflicts, the B.C. Coroners Service said in a news release.
When Dziekanski was shot with a Taser in October 2007, Lemaitre was posted to the RCMP's traffic services division, but was the officer in charge of RCMP media relations.
His initial accounts described Dziekanski as being distraught and behaving irrationally, adding that RCMP officers used two bursts of the Taser to immobilize him.
Video later surfaced that appeared to contradict those accounts. An inquiry into Dziekanski's death was also told that Lemaitre had watched portions of the video before issuing the first news release about the incident.
Lemaitre's death was investigated by the coroner, and "after reviewing the information from the coroner's investigation, the chief coroner directed this inquest to review the circumstances of Lemaitre's death, and to explore whether there are opportunities for a jury to make recommendations that may prevent deaths in similar circumstances," said the news release.
Lemaitre was a 28-year veteran of the RCMP.
In 2015, his widow launched a lawsuit against the RCMP, saying he was driven to commit suicide as a result of the negligence of other RCMP officers and harassment on the job.
According to the lawsuit, Lemaitre became aware that some of the information he had released to the media was incorrect. When he requested permission from his superiors to correct the misinformation, he was ordered not to and then removed as media representative on the case.
"After his posting to Langley in early 2008, he was shunned and isolated by his fellow members and constantly and repeatedly identified with the criticism levelled at the RCMP generally for their conduct in the YVR incident."
Lemaitre was also brought into public contempt, according to the lawsuit, as he was accused of being the "RCMP liar" and/or the "RCMP spin doctor."
The veteran police officer became depressed, furious, reluctant to engage socially and told his wife he had "a rage in his brain that he could not stop and he could not control and didn't know why," said the lawsuit.
The allegations in the lawsuit have not been proven in court.
With files from Postmedia and The Canadian Press
