London – The man who died after being pushed to the ground by police at this month’s London G20 summit died of internal bleeding, not a heart attack as previously said by police, a second postmortem revealed on Friday.
A police officer suspended after the incident has now been interviewed under caution on suspicion of manslaughter, a statement from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said.
Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller, was not part of the protests but walking home with his hands in his pockets when pushed to the ground from behind by police on April 1 – an act caught by chance on video.
An initial postmortem had suggested 47-year old Tomlinson died of coronary artery disease, but a subsequent postmortem – carried out at the request of the IPCC and Tomlinson’s family – found the death was due to “abdominal haemorrhage.”
“The cause of the haemorrhage remains to be ascertained,” the IPCC statement said.
The death of Tomlinson has created a political row in Britain, where police at first claimed to have no contact with the dead man, but come under bottle-throwing attack when attempting to resuscitate him.
Instead, subsequent video footage aired by The Guardian newspaper showed a police officer push Tomlinson over from behind in an apparently unprovoked attack.
A rash of subsequent home-made videos from the clashes between demonstrators and police at the protests in the City of London appear to show other examples of police brutality.
One shows an officer hit a woman on the legs with his truncheon at a rally for Tomlinson the next day, April 2.
On Wednesday an officer was suspended in connection with the Tomlinson death. (dpa)