RAID ILL-PLANNED: INQUIRY HEARS

City police launched an apartment raid - where two men plunged from a
balcony to their deaths - without a clear picture of who was inside, a
fatality inquiry heard yesterday.

Adam Miller, 21, and Huu Pham, 15, died after they plunged from the
fourth-floor balcony during the Sept. 24, 1999, raid. Sgt. John Lamb
testified yesterday that in briefings before the 12925 65 St. raid, his
tactical unit was not told underage people might be inside.

"On that day they didn't tell us," Lamb said in cross-examination by Tom
Engel, the lawyer representing Miller's family. "They could not confirm
completely who was likely to be in the suite."

Lamb said his team did not conduct their own reconnaissance of the suite,
relying instead on surveillance.

Miller and Pham were inside the apartment when cops battered down the door
to execute a search warrant as part of a city-wide operation targeting an
alleged drug ring.

The inquiry heard a surprise raid was planned because police intelligence
suggested guns were in the suite, along with a suspect tactical officers
were told had a violent past.

One officer detonated a flash-bang diversionary device from the parking lot
as the door was battered in. Another flash-bang was deployed just inside
the apartment door.

Miller and Pham later died from massive head injuries.

Engel contends a flash-bang device either blew the two men off the balcony
or stunned them into losing their grip on the railing as they tried to
escape onto a lower balcony.

A fatality inquiry is held to establish the time, place, manner and means
of death. It can make recommendations aimed at preventing similar deaths,
but it cannot find civil or criminal wrongdoing.

The inquiry was scheduled to last two weeks, but was already significantly
behind yesterday in its second day of hearings.

Three civilian witnesses are to be called today.