Talk:Video of man tasered at Vancouver airport released

Re: "being tasered to death" in the first sentence. The facts are that he was "tasered" and a short time later he died. The cause of death has not yet been determined by autopsy. Therefore, it is inaccurate to say he was "tasered to death". --Quadrastreet 20:07, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Although the chances of him having a completely unrelated heart attack right after are so small, I dont think they are going to say it wasnt the tasers that killed him. Matt/TheFearow | ^userpage | ^contribs 21:18, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Put it this way - if I hit someone around the head with a baseball bat and they then die of a brain trauma, saying "they died of brain trauma" is correct but in fact misleading. Likewise, Dziekanski would be alive if he had not been tasered. He was killed by tasering, just as my example would have died from being hit with a baseball bat. Toby Douglass 23:05, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Aside from the media hype surrounding this case and others, there seems to be a scientific consensus that tasers are nasty, painful things... but they don't kill you. Have a look at this CBC article posted today: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/11/16/ot-taser-071116.html?ref=rss --Quadrastreet 00:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I have made the edit. If the coroner's report says that the taser caused his death, the article can be changed. There is nothing at this time to suggest that the taser, as opposed to (for example) positional asphyxia or a hypothetical blow to the head when he fell, caused the death. As an aside, if the death was caused by positional asphyxia, he would NOT necessarily be alive if he hadn't been tasered - he could have been put in the chosen arrest position with the assistance of a chemical spray or just been overpowered into it. Also, did I miss something about the heart attack? There doesn't seem to be a mention of it in the article. StockGear 00:24, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

StockGear, that was a good edit and follows WN:NPOV (and removing that "best airport" reference as it was totally irrelevant was also wise). But, the autopsy might take days and this article should not be updated at that time. When the autopsy comes out a new article should be written. This is not Wikipedia. --SVTCobra 00:36, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

There is very little said about the actual cause of death in any of the news articles or news commentaries being published in the last couple of days... it's mostly assumed that he was "tasered to death". Very non-NPOV articles in the main stream press. The initial autopsies seem to be unable to determine the cause of death. As far as I know, there doesn't seem to be any way to detect if tasering was an actual cause of death in the very few cases. There have been, from what I've read, 17 "deaths after tasering" in Canada since 2003... which is actually quite a small number (less than 0.1%?) If tasers were actually causing deaths, wouldn't the death rate be much higher? --Quadrastreet 00:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)