CORONER HEARS TROUBLING TALE OF MAN HIGH ON HEROIN

A Langley man was high on heroin when he robbed a bank, jumped naked
from a window at home and was Tasered by RCMP before dying, a B.C.
coroner's jury heard Tuesday.

Frank Jonathan Frechette, 49, had also stabbed himself and uttered the
words "I won't go back" [to prison] as his Langley home was surrounded
by police in 2008, the jury heard.

He had used a shotgun to rob a bank of $3,500 and been followed home
by a landscaper who tipped off police.

Trina Toffan, his common-law wife, said Frechette was acting
"outrageously."

"He was pounding his chest like a gorilla and psyching himself up,"
she said. "He had a big butcher knife and was stabbing himself.

"He dove headfirst out the [secondstorey] window like he was going off
a diving board."

Toffan's credibility was challenged by federal counsel Helen Park,
acting for the RCMP. Park disputed Toffan's lack of knowledge of
Frechette's illicit drug-taking.

Toffan was charged with armed robbery in the same incident, but the
charges were dropped.

Outside the home, several police ordered Frechette to lie
down.

A plain-clothes RCMP officer, who Tasered Frechette twice, said he
heard screaming.

The officer, who cannot be named because of a publication ban, said
the situation was high-risk because so little was known.

"I did not know if he was a suspect or the homeowner," said the
officer.

Frechette, owner-operator of a moving company and originally from
Quebec, was taken into police custody and later died.

Outside the inquest, Jody Pylypow, the estranged mother of Frechette's
two children, said police overreacted.

"I don't think police needed to Taser him," Pylypow said. "Something
could have been done. My children don't have a father."