An internal investigations officer who reviewed the death of an aboriginal man who froze to death in an alley says Frank Paul's family certainly believed that they were given incorrect information about how he died.
Insp. Robert Rothwell says the police department called a council member at the First Nations band in Big Cove, N.B., where Paul was from and told that person that Paul had frozen to death, but not that he'd been in police custody just before that.
Paul's cousin, Peggy Clement, told the public inquiry into his death that the family was told the chronic alcoholic died in a hit-and run-accident and was found in a ditch.
She said it wasn't until later that the family learned Paul was refused admission to a detox centre and then dumped by a police officer in an alley, where he died of hypothermia on Dec. 6, 1998.
Rothwell, whose review eventually led to a dismissal of a complaint to the police complaints commission, says it wasn't easy to determine who was told what.
He says some members of Paul's family believed the RCMP had relayed certain information but it could have been someone in the band office.
