DEVICE EVIDENCE DIFFERS AT FATALITY HEARING

A city cop is standing by statements that a "flash-bang" he launched
did not strike a fourth-floor balcony causing two men to fall to their
deaths, a fatality inquiry heard yesterday. A flash-bang is a cop
distraction tool that the lawyer representing family of one of the
dead men - 21-year-old Adam Miller - argues could have caused the
deadly plunge from the apartment balcony at 12925 65 St. to a parking
lot below.

Tom Engel contends the device hit the balcony railing.

Engel yesterday at the inquiry into the Sept. 24, 1999, deaths of
Miller and Huu Pham, 15, cross-examined the police constable who said
he lobbed the heavy cylinder towards the balcony a second before three
men came running outside.

Const. Malcolm Allan testified it exploded in the air near a balcony
one floor down and to the left of the suite where the men were
climbing over the railing. Miller and Pham continued over the railing,
while the third man, Thinh Duc Vu, now 33, retreated.

That's when Miller and Pham simultaneously dropped to the ground,
Allan said. The pair didn't appear to speak before letting go of the
railing, he added.

"They essentially stepped off and let go of the railing at the same
time," Allan said.

"I didn't observe any overt effort to grab onto the second-or
third-floor balcony (as they fell)."

Allan stood by earlier statements that the flash-bang did not strike
the railing. Notes he took at the scene that say it "hit the railing,"
fell one floor and then exploded meant the device simply rose to the
level of the railing but didn't physically contact the barrier.

"We see it as a major discrepancy," Engel said outside provincial
court. "We see that the way he describes it in his notes corroborates
what Thinh Duc Vu says."

Vu testified in December he was halfway onto the balcony when he saw a
"smoke bomb" fly past him and strike the railing with a loud noise.

The judge yesterday ordered a police demonstration of a tactical-team
flash-bang device.

"I just want to hear something and see something go off at that
level," said Judge Leo Wenden.

"I would like an actual demonstration."

The raid was part of a citywide Edmonton police and RCMP sting
operation aimed at an alleged major drug gang.

Pham and Miller were not suspects.

The inquiry will resume in about two weeks. Meanwhile, lawyers and
police are arranging a flash-bang demonstration.