From the press release issued by the City of London coroners court :
On 9 April 2009 HM Coroner for the City of London opened and adjourned the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson. In so doing he received evidence of identification and the provisional findings and opinion as to the medical cause of death from a report prepared by the consultant forensic pathologist, Dr F Patel, instructed by HM Coroner to conduct the post-mortem examination. The pathologist’s final opinion must await the completion of additional tests.
“Dr F Patel made a number of findings of fact including descriptions of a number of injuries and of diseased organs including the heart and liver. He found a substantial amount of blood in the abdominal cavity. His provisional interpretation of his findings was that the cause of death was coronary artery disease.
“A subsequent post-mortem examination was conducted by another consultant forensic pathologist, Dr N Cary, instructed by the IPCC and by solicitors acting for the family of the late Mr Tomlinson. Dr Cary’s provisional findings and his interpretation of the findings have been provided to HM Coroner in a further preliminary report (the final report once again awaiting the outcome of further tests). Dr Cary’s opinion is that the cause of death was abdominal haemorrhage.
“The cause of the haemorrhage remains to be ascertained. Dr Cary accepts that there is evidence of coronary atherosclerosis but states that in his opinion its nature and extent is unlikely to have contributed to the cause of death. The opinions of both consultant pathologists are provisional and both agree that their final opinions must await the outcome of further investigations and tests. These are likely to take some time. The IPCC’s investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson is ongoing.”
In other words, the initial verdict of death by heart attack, widely reported even before the first coroner had reported his findings, was a lie. What’s more, the findings of the second report have been held up a week because the Independent Police Complaints Commission was afraid it could prejudice its inquiry. That’s not the end of it: the first pathologist investigating Tomlinson’s death had been reprimanded for his conduct before, once for smearing a black man who had died in police custody, once for diagnosing a murder victim as having died of natural causes, leaving the murderer to kill twice more. Why he was brought in to look at this death is unknown, but might his conduct in the first case have had anything to do with it?
Meanwhile the officer who had attacked Tomlinson minutes for his death, has now been questioned on suspicion of manslaugther. We’ll have to wait to see if anything comes from this, but at least it’s more than Jean Charles de Menezes’ family ever got. What’s also different from the Menezes case is how the media is reporting on Tomlinson’s death, much more critical of the police than they were then.
