TASERED MAN DIED OF COCAINE ABUSE

A forensic pathologist who did an autopsy on a 25-year-old Vancouver
man said his death was due to cocaine, not two blasts from a Taser.

Dr. Laurel Gray said Roman Andreichikov died of cardiac arrest while
struggling with police in his apartment on May 1, 2004, while in a
state of cocaine psychosis.

"It would appear the man had died during a struggle because of the
effects of cocaine intoxication," Gray told a coroner's inquest at
Metrotown yesterday.

She called his death "restraint-assisted cardiac arrest."

Asked if he was killed with a Taser, Gray replied: "Not on the basis
of the autopsy or the information I was provided with, that he
continued to struggle after the Taser darts were applied. If one
attributes the death to the Taser, one would expect that he would
have collapsed immediately."

Gray said she has dealt with a half-dozen cases of people who died
from cocaine psychosis during a struggle with police.

Gray found no signs of damage to the gym trainer's heart.

"Cocaine is really toxic to the heart," she said. "It makes the heart
beat faster and constricts the coronary arteries."

Toxicologist Dr. Stuart Huckin said Andreichikov had a potentially
lethal amount of cocaine in his body.

"Most people with this level of cocaine in their blood would be at
great risk of dying, if not already dead, from this high level of cocaine."

Andreichikov had 11.2 milligrams of cocaine in his blood, which is
over the "minimum lethal level."

"This is a very high level if somebody is smoking crack cocaine," he
said. "They are at very great risk to die from [cardiac] arrhythmia.

"The deceased had been using a large amount of cocaine fairly
recently before he died."

Huckin said between 100 and 200 people in B.C. are expected to die
this year as a result of cocaine, making it the deadliest drug in the province.

"We have a large number of deaths in B.C. of people dying from using
cocaine, where the police are not involved," he said.

Huckin said this is probably the 20th time he has been at an inquest
dealing with a cocaine-related death in police custody.

The coroner's jury is expected to deliver its verdict today.